Legacy Business Park breaks ground in Lexington

City leaders say the project will bring nearly 1,700 jobs and millions in tax revenue

LEXINGTON, Ky. (ABC 36 NEWS NOW) — Construction is now underway on the new Legacy Business Park, located between Georgetown Road and I-75.

Mayor Linda Gorton, alongside other state leaders, broke ground on the 200-acre project Wednesday morning.

City officials say the Legacy Business Park is one step closer to becoming a major addition for Lexington’s economy. They credit partnerships between the city, the University of Kentucky, and the federal government for making the groundbreaking possible.

With the project officially in motion, Mayor Linda Gorton said the site will offer a range of opportunities.

“This 200-acre park includes 19 lots, totaling 147 acres for development, bike and pedestrian trails that connect to the city’s Legacy Trail, and extensive green spaces,” Gorton said.

City leaders estimate the new business park will bring nearly 1,700 jobs, close to $100 million in combined payroll, and about $6.8 million in local tax revenue.

The project comes with a price tag of $22.6 million, funded by various grants, federal money, and $10 million in taxpayer dollars.

Congressman Andy Barr said the city will quickly see a return on that investment.

“This $10 million investment really pays for itself; there’s a huge ROI with this.” Barr said. “$10 million taxpayer investment here, resulting in the spin off of economic activity that pays for itself in just 1 year easily,” said Barr.

The land where the park is being built was previously owned by the University of Kentucky. UK ultimately agreed to transfer the land to the city. University President Eli Capilouto said the project aligns with UK’s mission.

“This business park helps us further fulfill our mission and our dream of a healthier, wealthier, and wiser Kentucky,” Capilouto said.

City leaders celebrated the groundbreaking, noting it took seven years to reach this milestone.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – You can expect to see movement east of Georgetown Road, just south of I 64/75, as development for Lexington’s new ‘Legacy Business Park’ gets underway.

Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton as well as other local and state leaders broke ground on it Wednesday morning.

“Legacy will be an appealing place to work and that will support businesses as they work to recruit our best talent,” said Gorton.

2850 Georgetown Road is set to be the home of at least 19 businesses and 1,700 new jobs with an annual payroll of $100 million.

The 200-acre property is a long time coming. Gorton said it was first talked about in 2018.

“In our community we afford investments in quality of life and city services by growing our jobs like those we’re talking about today.”

Legacy Business Park is one of the newest developments state leaders say will advance the Commonwealth.

“Each year these jobs are expected to produce approximately $6.8 million in local tax revenue and $4.1 million in state tax revenue,” said Gorton.

According to the renderings, the various businesses will be surrounded by bike and pedestrian trails that connect to the city’s Legacy Trail as well as green spaces.

The land was formerly used by the University of Kentucky’s College of Agriculture.

“Because of the proximity here from Coldstream I think we are going to have an opportunity for better alignment of infrastructure and talent,” said Dr. Eli Capilouto, President of UK.

The city says companies interested in the site must have a connection to UK. For example the workforce or an existing partnership.

“It’s where innovation can meet and spawn industry,” said Dr. Capilouto. “It’s where our students can have an opportunity to realize their future careers.”

It’s a nearly $23 million project in total

Leaders say the return on investment is expected to be huge.

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Developer: Greystar

Architect: Cube 3

Location: North Andover, Massachusetts

Units: 540 beds

Cost: Withheld

Charleston, South Carolina-based Greystar and Merrimack College, a private college in North Andover, Massachusetts, have hit the ground running on a public-private partnership that will add 540 new student beds across two residence halls to the college’s North Andover campus.

The unnamed project, located at the intersection of Route 114 and Andover Street, broke ground on Sept. 20 and is expected to open by fall 2026. It will be the first new on-campus residential option for Merrimack students since 2015, according to a news release shared with Multifamily Dive.

The project’s public-private partnership has allowed Greystar to utilize tax-exempt bonds issued by MassDevelopment, Massachusetts’s finance agency and land bank, to finance 100% of the project costs, according to Gary Kerr, senior managing director of development for Greystar.

“Successful navigation of this unique and essential capital structure was made possible by focused collaboration between many parties,” Kerr said during the groundbreaking.

By expanding its offerings, Merrimack College intends to meet persistent demand for on-campus housing and allow students living in private, off-campus housing to return to the premises, according to the release. The property is designed to integrate with the existing campus and provide views of nearby landmarks.

“This modern, innovative living environment is important for achieving our enrollment and retention goals, and it is key for our students to succeed and thrive,” said Christpher E. Hopey, president of Merrimack College, in the release.

The two four-story buildings, designed by Boston architect Cube 3, will offer a total of 540 beds across a variety of room types for first- and second-year undergraduates. The first residence hall will have traditional-style student housing, with 351 beds, academic space and student gathering areas across 79,600 square feet. The adjacent 61,300-square-foot building will include 189 beds in suite-style units, each with en-suite living rooms and bathrooms. Amenities will include a fitness center, laundry rooms and communal spaces.

By the numbers

Merrimack College had 5,400 graduate and undergraduate students in the 2023-2024 school year, according to the college’s fact sheet. The school has 10 existing on-campus housing options, including suites, apartments and traditional dormitories. Housing expenses for on-campus students range from approximately $6,262-$8,125 per semester for the 2024-2025 school year.

Approximately 73% of students live on campus, including 85% of first-year undergraduates. There are no purpose-built private student housing developments near the campus.

Greystar, the largest multifamily owner, operator and developer in the U.S., has a student housing portfolio of over $17.8 billion in assets under management, with more than 110,000 student beds across the world, according to the company website.

The company has developed over 70 properties on college and university campuses. It has three on-campus projects in progress — the Merrimack College project; the Kirwan Building at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, set to open in 2026; and Hale Haukani at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, opening in 2025.

This concept plan shows Champions Park, part of the 40-acre mixed-use development planned for parcels east of the National Sports Complex and west of the intersection of 105th Avenue and Radisson Road in Blaine. (Rendering: City of Blaine)

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The area around Blaine’s National Sports Center complex could soon be much livelier — and less focused on youth and amateur sports.

A development team led by Elevage and Bader is expected to break ground in July on the first phase of a 40-acre mixed-use development planned for parcels east of the sports complex and west of the intersection of 105th Avenue and Radisson Road, Blaine community development director Erik Thorvig said in an interview. The three-phase project, which will feature a pedestrian-friendly core with restaurants, hotels, and entertainment uses, could be complete by 2030, Thorvig said.

Meanwhile, phase one of PinPoint Development’s nearby National Sports Village is expected to open later this year. That project is an early test of the Metropolitan Airports Commission’s efforts to stimulate development on parcels adjacent to Twin Cities airports, including the Anoka County-Blaine general aviation hub.

The National Sports Center happenings come at a busy time for real estate development in Blaine. With robust transportation infrastructure, easy access to the Twin Cities’ core, and favorable demographic trends, the north metro city is particularly appealing to commercial and industrial developers like Capital Partners, which recently built out two industrial sites in Blaine and plans at least two more. The city’s northeast quadrant remains only partially built out, drawing residential builders and keeping local starter-home prices in check. And, on the other side of town, the underutilized Northtown Mall complex offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity for transit-oriented infill development.

A mixed-use economic engine

With 4 million annual visitors and an estimated economic impact of $83 million, the 600-acre National Sports Center complex, or NSC, is already an important economic engine for Blaine.

But it can do even more for the city. The Mall of America, another major Twin Cities tourism destination that has had to reinvent itself to stay relevant, offers lessons for NSC and Blaine city leaders, Maxfield Research President Mary Bujold said in an interview. Both were conceived as largely single-purpose destinations, “which isn’t sustainable in the long run,” she said.

One issue for the National Sports Center is that many families and fan groups stay elsewhere, in Maple Grove, Roseville, even Bloomington, said Thorvig. Those cities lure NSC visitors with plentiful, affordable hotels and an array of dining and entertainment options, the end result being that they spend much of their time and money outside Blaine’s borders. The NSC touts more than 20 restaurants within three miles, but the entire city of Blaine has just three hotels, Thorvig said.

Adding a mixed-use district immediately adjacent to the NSC’s athletic facilities solves the problem of “what to do when your kid has their first game at 10 a.m. and their next at 5 p.m.,” Thorvig said.

Project sketches show a compact, walkable core with restaurants and family-friendly recreation — an indoor batting cage is a possibility, Thorvig said — flanked by district parking and green space. Phase one will include a hotel. A second hotel, in phase two, could include an indoor water park. Plans also call for hundreds of new apartments and a Class A office building that could feature a sports medicine facility, Thorvig said.

“We’re expecting this project to have an extremely positive economic impact locally,” he said.

Another mixed-use opportunity, eventually

Blaine’s other big mixed-use infill development opportunity, the area around the faded Northtown Mall, could eventually do even more than the NSC project for the city’s economy and tax base. But the payoff is farther in the future and, as of now, mired in uncertainty.

The city is in the very early stages of implementing a master plan sketched out by a team including Damon Farber Associates, which drew up similar plans for Ridgedale Mall in Minnetonka and Burnsville Center in Burnsville. Elements include a destination “lifestyle center” to replace the Northtown Mall building, a modern office park on the current Northtown Village site, and a mixed-use core featuring hundreds of hotel rooms and multifamily units, all knit together by pedestrian-friendly roads, trails, and parkland. Metro Transit’s planned F Line BRT route will serve a refreshed Northtown Transit Center, adding capacity and frequency to the current Route 10 bus connecting southwest Blaine with downtown Minneapolis.

The 30-year vision imagines “a wholesale change” to the 200-acre, largely commercial area bounded by Highway 10, Highway 47, and Sanburnol Drive NE, said Thorvig. The master plan proposes 4.69 million square feet of medium- and high-density multifamily on the site, up from 111,000 square feet currently. The retail footprint would shrink from 1.77 million square feet to 1.07 million square feet. Much of the district’s surface parking would disappear.

Blaine city planners are “asking the right question,” Bujold said. “‘How do we focus on redeveloping our core areas where we already have a lot of traffic and activity?’”

With most of Blaine’s remaining undeveloped land guided for low-density residential, the Northtown district offers a rare chance to replace an obsolete regional mall while adding density in an area with robust transportation and utility infrastructure. But early efforts to add housing in the area have run into trouble: A proposal to add 220 apartments on the site of a vacant Rainbow Foods store included in the Northtown master plan appears to have been tabled in favor of a pickleball club alongside traditional strip retail.

Overall, Blaine’s approach at Northtown is more hands-off than at the National Sports Center, where it directly owns some of the land slated for development and leases a 16-acre parcel from the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission, Thorvig said.

This year, city planners are updating Blaine’s comprehensive plan and zoning regulations to enable higher-density residential development at Northtown, and the city council might consider financial incentives for developments on a case-by-case basis, but “we don’t anticipate the city being active in property acquisition here,” Thorvig said.

A sweet spot for Twin Cities industrial (and residential)

It’s not just regional retail centers and sports facilities drawing real estate developers to Blaine. The city’s excellent road and highway network, proximity to the Twin Cities’ core, and low vacancies alongside ample industrial zoning make it one of the best places to site new industrial in an otherwise mediocre Twin Cities market, said Dick Friedrichs, senior director of land acquisitions at Edina-based Capital Partners.

Capital Partners’ Naples I and Naples II projects increased Blaine’s industrial inventory by 315,000 square feet. As Naples II leases up, the firm is moving ahead with the 27-acre, 378,000-square-foot 35W Logistics Center at the southwest corner of Sunset Avenue and 109th Avenue Northeast, and has a 30-acre parcel under contract for the third phase of its Naples development, Friedrich said.

The Twin Cities North Central industrial submarket, which includes Blaine, had a direct vacancy rate of just 1.8%, second only to the supply-constrained Minneapolis-proper submarket, according to a CBRE Market Insights report. With new industrial product slow to come online amid macroeconomic challenges, north metro industrial property owners can increase rents by a comfortable 4% or 5% when tenants renew, Friedrich said.

And Blaine is well-placed to benefit as the sector recovers. Beyond its location and transportation infrastructure, the city has a host of tailwinds, including a relatively young labor force with an average age of 39, a diversified housing market featuring starter homes priced under $400,000 and newer build-to-rent communities like Foxtail Hollow and the Enclave at Lexington Waters, and a city government that’s “pro-development and easy to work with,” Friedrich said.

Absent wholesale turnover in city leadership, Blaine’s pro-development posture isn’t likely to change soon. Blaine will have about 87,000 residents in 2040, up from about 70,000 in 2020, according to the Metropolitan Council’s long-range population projections.

“So we have plenty of opportunities for residential growth,” Thorvig said.

The facility will sit on 200 acres, which the company says will allow for future expansion. Siemens says the facility will create more than 500 jobs in Davidson County, which has a population of nearly 20,000. The facility will begin operations in 2024 and Siemens says it will incorporate some of the latest technologies found in its Sacramento facility, including robotic welding, 3D printing and Virtual Reality welder training.

“Siemens’ breaking ground today is the direct result of the city of Lexington staff working diligently with the Siemens’ team, governmental agencies and many other stakeholders to ensure all steps in this process go smoothly, and we are thankful for all involved,” said Lexington Mayor Jason Hayes. “The investment and jobs this project brings to the area will improve the quality of life for so many in our community. We are very excited to continue our partnership with Siemens to bring this project through to opening day!”

Siemens unveiled plans to build an East Coast manufacturing hub in the United States in March 2023. The Lexington, N.C., facility will be Siemens’ ninth manufacturing facility and will position Siemens’ products closer to its customers. The $220-million carbon neutral facility will be supported with a Job Development Investment Grant from the state of North Carolina. Siemens reports the facility is estimated to grow the state’s economy by $1.6 billion over the course of the 12-year term of the grant.

“Our new east coast hometown will soon be a powerhouse when it comes to rail manufacturing,” said Michael Cahill, president rolling stock, Siemens Mobility North America. “Complementing our operations in Sacramento, our bi-coastal facilities will work together to manufacture the latest rail technology and transform the everyday for communities across the country.”