Why has it taken 7 years for a small Lexington connector road in Winburn to be built?
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Citing safety, traffic and other concerns, Lexington Councilman James Brown successfully lobbied the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council to set aside $4.5 million in 2017 for a new connector road from Winburn Drive to Citation Boulevard.
Winburn Drive is the only way into the neighborhood that has multiple apartment complexes, hundreds of homes and Winburn Middle School, which is located at the end of the dead-end street.
It’s dangerous, Brown argued at the time.
Seven years after the 2017 discussion, the half-mile road from the dead end on Winburn Drive to Citation Boulevard has still not been built.
Why?
Making way for the road? It’s complicated
Brown, who is now an at-large council member, said obtaining right-of-way or buying land needed for that public road has been thorny and difficult. Buried utilities are in that right-of-way, which has also complicated obtaining land for the road.
Obtaining right-of-way is also more difficult when it involves working with the Fayette County School District. A myriad of rules involving school property (the road would go through Winburn Middle School property) means state and federal sign-offs, said Doug Burton, director of engineering for the city.
The city is in the process of obtaining all parcels needed for the right-of-way to build the road, Brown said. Those negotiations are ongoing.
“We are hoping to start construction in the spring of 2025,” Brown said.
Other issues thwarting the road’s progress include saving some trees, which meant moving the prospective road less than 100 yards, Burton said.
Over the years, Griffin Gate, where the road will connect on the Citation side, and the Winburn neighborhood have also expressed reservations about the new road, further slowing its progress, multiple people said.
Multiple attempts to reach people with the Winburn Neighborhood Association were unsuccessful.
Connector road is 40 years overdue
Bruce Simpson, a lawyer, said the connector road is 40 years overdue.
Simpson represented family members and residents of an apartment building in Winburn that caught fire in the late 1980s. An accident near the entrance to Winburn on Russell Cave cut off the entrance to the neighborhood, delaying fire and ambulance response. Several people died and multiple people were seriously injured, Simpson said.
Winburn, which was built in the 1970s and has long been a predominately minority neighborhood, is likely one of the largest neighborhoods in Lexington that is one-way-in and one-way-out, Simpson said.
City planners frequently point to Winburn and that fire as the reason why connectivity — or multiple ways in and out of an area — is now the norm, Simpson said.
Simpson, who has practiced planning law for more than 40 years, said there have been discussions about that connector to Citation Boulevard for decades.
“I do not want something like (that fire) to happen again,” Simpson said. “But if it does, these public officials would be liable.”
Russell Cave Road is only getting busier, meaning traffic accidents at the intersection of Russell Cave and Winburn are more likely, Simpson said.
The road would help alleviate traffic
Brown said the half-mile connector road will also alleviate traffic going into and out of Winburn, particularly during drop-off and pick-up times at Winburn Middle School.
The proposed connection to Citation Boulevard will start where the road currently dead ends near the middle school.
The connection to Citation Boulevard will give people in Winburn direct access to a new Kroger soon to be constructed off of Newtown Pike and other shops and stores, Brown said.
“It has the potential to be transformative for this area,” Brown said. “Not only will it provide access to grocery stores and the development on Newtown Pike, it connects this area to the business park.”
The University of Kentucky Coldstream Park is not far from where the new road would connect with Citation.
