LEXINGTON, Ky. — It was a quiet week on the city's Accela permitting portal. Of the 13 Planning Division records that changed between Oct. 10 and Sunday, 12 were zoning compliance permits, 10 of them filed under the names of recovery programs, entities with "recovery" in their names or a residential reentry center, and one was a plat that moves a lot line on Jacana Drive. The action was at the Board of Adjustment and the council instead. On Monday, Oct. 12, the board granted the first three requests under a process the Law Department laid out in August: occupancy increases for recovery residences, sought as reasonable accommodations under the federal Fair Housing Act. Two homes run by Perfect Imperfections Kentucky may now house up to 12 people each, and a Begin Again Lex home in Patchen Wilkes may house 10, where the zoning ordinance otherwise caps unrelated residents at eight.

The same afternoon the board denied a drive-through window for a liquor store at the Park Hills Shopping Center on Pimlico Parkway, four days after the council gave first reading to a rewrite of the city's drive-through rules. Thursday, Oct. 22, is a double-header: the Planning Commission hears nine zoning items, including the Urban Growth Master Plan text amendment, the downtown zones rewrite and the fourth appearance of Andover Commons, while the council takes up second readings that include the stripped-down data-center ordinance and the drive-through rules.

Three recovery homes get more beds under the Fair Housing Act

The three appeals were the last items on the board's Oct. 12 docket. The meeting archive shows no earlier reasonable-accommodation case before the board, and its counsel, Brittany Smith of the Department of Law, remarked while asking for a recess to draft findings that "it is the first one we have done like this." Staff made no recommendation on any of them. "As Mr. Cravens explained in his presentation in August, the staff will not be making a recommendation on these requests," the planner presenting the cases said. "We are just providing information."

That August presentation came from Michael Cravens, the Law Department's managing attorney for the Board of Adjustment, at the board's Aug. 10 meeting. Cravens told the board that the zoning ordinance treats eight unrelated people as the maximum occupancy of a dwelling, "except as otherwise approved by the Board of Adjustment as a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act," and that people in recovery from substance use disorders are disabled persons under that law. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news if you don't already know, but y'all are going to have a role in this," Cravens said. The test, as Cravens put it, is whether an accommodation is "necessary" and "reasonable." Cravens predicted the board would start seeing requests "this fall" for "10 beds or 12 beds or 14 beds."

The council created the recovery residence license that sends these cases to the board in Ordinance 1004-25, passed Nov. 20, 2025, after an amendment by Council Member Shayla Lynch two days earlier, which forced a new first reading, so that a license application can state an occupancy "approved by the Board of Adjustment as a reasonable accommodation" (clip 6627).

Perfect Imperfections Kentucky asked for 12 residents at 1006 Gainesway Drive, a six-bedroom house in an R-1C zone where eight people live now, and 12 for the whole parcel at 1603 Versailles Road, a house with a separate rear apartment. Coritta Roberts-Chadwell, introduced as the organization's chief executive, and Nathan Thomas, a graduate of the program who now works there, testified that the program is a licensed treatment provider that opened in August 2020, accepts couples, keeps house managers on site, and runs background checks that exclude sex offenders. The applicants said the average stay is "three to four months" and that the 12 would include the house managers. The findings the board adopted, read by member Harry Clark, recite the applicant's testimony that "demand for safe recovery housing frequently exceeds available beds with 176 waitlisted clients and all available housing full." Those figures are the applicant's. Nobody spoke against either request, and from the dais the second one closed with "We appreciate what you all are doing." The Fayette PVA roll as captured June 11, 2026, lists 1006 Gainesway, a 1960 house on 0.3651 acres, under Booker Group Investments LLC, which bought it Aug. 12, 2022, for $200,000, and 1603 Versailles Road, a 1920 house, under Leathan Properties LLC, which bought it Jan. 11, 2024, for $207,500.

Begin Again Lex asked to go from eight to 10 residents at 2076 Coriander Lane, a three-bedroom, 2,062-square-foot house in the Patchen Wilkes subdivision that the owner of Begin Again Counseling, Michelle Kunic, said the program moved into in May. The caption track renders the address as 276; the city's zoning compliance permit and the PVA roll, which lists the house under Central KY Lodging Inc. as bought Aug. 22, 2025, for $300,500, say 2076. "Increasing the occupancy limit from 8 to 10 will preserve the residential character of the home," Kunic told the board, and said one bedroom is "almost 300 square feet." Asked how long residents stay, Kunic said "between three and six months," with some staying up to a year while the program finds them permanent housing. The program keeps no waiting list, Kunic said, preferring to refer people elsewhere. The board recessed to draft findings on the two Perfect Imperfections requests, took each address as a separate motion at counsel's insistence, approved both, and then approved Begin Again Lex without a further recess. The zoning compliance permits that the ordinance requires are visible on Accela. Ten of the week's 12 compliance permits, dated Oct. 12 or 13 and showing a status of Complete, are filed under recovery-program names or names containing "recovery," or under Dismas Charities, which runs a residential reentry center on Georgetown Street: Perfect Imperfections Kentucky at 1006 Gainesway Drive and 1603 Versailles Road and Begin Again Lex at 2076 Coriander Lane, dated the day after the hearing, plus Bluegrass Recovery at 1209 and 1211 Accord Drive, 1513 Mount Rainier Drive and 3045 Dartmouth Drive, Whole Life Recovery Center LLC at 313 Hummingbird Lane, Stable Recovery Inc. at 3077 Walnut Hill Road and Dismas Charities at 909 Georgetown Street. The permit records list the applicant and address, not the use. The 11th is Tearica Cobb's barber shop on De Porres Avenue, approved by the board the same day.

No drive-through for the Pimlico Parkway liquor store

Compass Capital Retail Partners LLC, which owns the Park Hills Shopping Center at 3120-3130 Pimlico Parkway, asked for a conditional use permit for "a pick-up window for a proposed liquor store within an existing retail space," as The Lexington Times reported Sept. 14. The plan put the window on a 6,791-square-foot one-story building, in a tenant space that had been a dentist's office, served by an existing one-way drive aisle that already feeds a drive-through for the neighboring tenant.

Planning staff recommended disapproval. The two drive-through lanes would run in the same direction, the planner said, so the new window "would be serving the passenger side door of any vehicles," cars would exit behind both buildings where "there is limited visibility and turn radius," and one of the five stacking spaces sat behind a stop line where a waiting car "could encourage vehicles to block the internal circulation of the site." The applicant's justification, as staff read it, expected "anywhere from five to 30 customers each day."

Alex Mulhall, the applicant's attorney, told the board the plan was prepared with input from other tenants and from the city's traffic engineers, who "reviewed this plan, confirmed there were no issues." Mulhall said the window would be at the rear of the building, not beside the neighbor's, and that a passenger-side window is "a common" arrangement at some fast-food chains. The use, Mulhall said, is "not like a coffee shop or McDonald's that's going to have constant regular volume traffic backed out to the street." Brad Boaz of CMW Inc., who drew the plan, said everything in red on the sheet was the only change to a traffic flow that exists today.

A traffic engineering staffer at the meeting disputed the account of the department's review. "I'm not aware of another drive-thru in Lexington that has a driver reach across the passenger side to go to the window," the staffer said, adding that drivers would come in "the wrong way" expecting a window on their side and that "I just increased the conflicting points." One board member called the plan "very awkward" and said "it's probably in the wrong place." Chad Walker moved to uphold the staff recommendation, Linda Tucker seconded, and the chair announced the result: "It has been disapproved." No one from the public spoke on the case.

The denial landed in the middle of the council's own work on drive-throughs. At its Oct. 6 work session, the council docketed an ordinance rewriting Section 16-9 of the zoning ordinance, which Planning Division staff told the General Government and Planning Committee on Sept. 8 still reflects a "one-size-fits-all" 1983 rule requiring five stacking spaces for every drive-through. The rewrite sets stacking by facility type, measures stacking from the order point to the pick-up point and requires it to stay off the right-of-way and out of parking spaces, and lets the Planning Commission waive or modify the counts on an operational plan. On Oct. 6, Council Member Shayla Lynch moved to restore a provision the committee had struck, requiring "a minimum of one direct pedestrian walkway, a minimum of five feet in width" from the right-of-way to the building without crossing a drive-through lane. Council Member Whitney Elliott Baxter, who carried the rewrite, argued the walkway would force waivers on redevelopment sites. "The McDonald's on Harrodsburg Road" would have had to request one, Baxter said. Lynch's amendment passed on a voice vote with two noes, and the ordinance had first reading Oct. 8. The council's next regular meeting is Thursday, Oct. 22.

A duplex on a 12-foot-wide street, and the rest of Monday's docket

The board went against staff on one other case. Canopy Property Management LLC asked for four variances to build a two-story, two-unit duplex at 246 Idaho Avenue in Brucetown, a 1,547-square-foot remnant lot along the railroad that staff planner Daniel Crum described as "an extremely narrow parcel" reached only from a street with about 12 feet of pavement, no sidewalk and a guard rail. The variances cut the rear yard to 4 feet 6 inches, the front yard to zero and the side setbacks for paving to zero, and let paving cover 84.62 percent of the required front yard, according to the legal advertisement. Crum's concern was "putting that paving in that area on such a substandard street." An unidentified speaker added that a fire truck is about 12 feet wide but needs 20 feet to set its outriggers. The applicant, Jeff Moore, told the board the two-bedroom units would rent for about $1,100 a month and that the nearest on-street parking is about 155 feet away around the corner on Florida Street. A board member said Idaho Avenue "functions as an alley," a characterization Moore thanked member Brandon Gross for; Gross moved to approve, and another member said they would support it "with considerable reservation." It passed with two conditions after a recess to write findings.

Berea Christian Church got its expanded conditional use permit for a new sanctuary and parking lot at 3894 Iron Works Pike and 2675 Berea Road, but with a smaller variance than it asked for: a front setback of 30 feet rather than the 15 feet it originally requested, matching the existing church. The revised plan cuts parking from 110 spaces to 97 and the spaces at least partly inside the 25-foot floodplain setback from 31 to about 12, staff said. The only public opposition of the day came from Hazel Combs, the neighbor of 38 years whose property line the original plan put pavement within 13 feet of. "This entire building process has been somewhat of a secret," Combs said, adding that after attending through four postponements "you never asked if there was someone in opposition." The church's representative said the parking was moved 42 feet farther from the line after neighborhood meetings and the building shrank from 9,800 to 7,800 square feet. Approval came with a rewritten condition tying any parking in the floodplain to a special use permit under Article 19.

Six cases were put off. Woodlake Properties LLC's live-entertainment permit at 125 Cherrybark Drive and Barnes Mill Farm II LLC's short-term rental at 5121 Jacks Creek Pike go to Nov. 9; Matthew Gene Lawson's setback variance at 232 Warnock Street was postponed a month over what staff called "the property line dispute from the last hearing"; Nicholas Wolter's request for a front-yard parking pad at 716 Harrison Trace and Embry Property Management LLC's accessory-building variances at 112 Garrett Avenue were continued to November after both applicants uploaded revised plans the morning of the hearing; and TNT Kentucky Estates LLC's short-term rental at 3182 Aqueduct Drive moved to Dec. 14 because the out-of-state applicant could not travel. Approved without opposition were a detached garage at 929 Idlewild Court, an addition at 335 Transylvania Park, Idle Hour Country Club's pool bar, an accessory residence at Boones Creek Baptist Church, and a home barber shop at 933 De Porres Avenue after the objectors withdrew their opposition following a conversation with staff earlier in the meeting. HG Homes of KY LLC's short-term rental at 3573 Laredo Drive was approved with two opposition letters on file and nobody present to object; asked whether the unit was also listed on Zillow as a long-term rental, the applicant said "we may have that."

The one filing: a lot line on Jacana Drive

The week's one substantive upload is a consolidation minor subdivision plat for 1581 Jacana Drive in The Oaks Subdivision off Harrodsburg Road, filed Friday, Oct. 16, by CAM Surveying for Collier Properties LLC of Nicholasville. The sheet, drawn at one inch to 30 feet, attaches a 0.023-acre strip of Lot 10 to the 0.207-acre corner lot at Mockingbird Lane and Jacana Drive, for a single R-1D lot of 0.230 acres with 200 feet of frontage. The adjoining Lot 10 land is labeled as Collier Properties too, so the company is moving a line between two of its own parcels. "Parcel 1 shall be sold or transferred only to Parcel 2 for consolidation purposes," the plat's consolidation note reads. The survey was performed in October 2025; the plat is dated October 2026 and none of its certification lines are signed on the uploaded copy. A minor plat is certified by the Planning Commission's secretary without a hearing.

The Fayette PVA roll as captured June 11, 2026, lists Collier Properties LLC as owner of six parcels, five of them in the same pocket of the 40503 ZIP code: 1581-1583 Jacana, a 1953 house on 0.2296 acres bought Nov. 21, 2025, for $260,000; 1574 Jacana, on the even-numbered side of the street, bought Sept. 19, 2025, for $240,000 and carried with a 2026 year built; 1562 and 1566 Jacana, both built in 2017; and 1551 Heron Lane. The roll does not show the Lot 10 remainder as a separate Collier parcel, so this report does not say what the strip was carved from beyond what the plat labels.

Thursday: nine items at the Planning Commission, second readings at council

The Planning Commission's Oct. 22 hearing, advertised on lexingtonky.gov, lists 10 case numbers that staff at the Oct. 15 work session counted as nine items. Two are large rezonings on the east side: Ball Homes' petition for 37.15 net acres at 5085 Athens Boonesboro Road, from A-R to R-4, and Anderson Communities' petition for 123.13 net acres at 4200 Todds Road, from A-R to B-1 and R-4. Andover Commons returns as a five-part waiver for the Germond property, covering an access easement as sole access for townhomes, lots without street frontage, substandard cross-sections, blocks longer than 1,000 feet and connectivity to adjoining parcels; it was postponed Aug. 27, Sept. 24 and Oct. 8. Up Campus Student Living's rezoning of 1.134 net acres at 226-230 E. High St., Stone Avenue and Hagerman Court to B-2A is on the list; on Oct. 1 the commission's Zoning Committee recommended postponing the zone change while its Subdivision Committee recommended approval of the companion development plan with six conditions (The Lexington Times reported Oct. 5 that both committees recommended postponement; that was wrong as to the Subdivision Committee). Also listed are Turner Property 4's PUD-3 rezoning at 1305-1309 W. Main St. with two variances and Regency Holdings Three's B-1 rezoning at 131 and 147 Pasadena Drive with three variances, a drive-through conditional use and a waiver. Rounding out the docket are the Downtown Zones update (PLN-ZOTA-26-00010), the Urban Growth Master Plan implementation amendment (PLN-ZOTA-26-00011) and the Complete Streets subdivision regulation amendment (PLN-SRA-26-00001). Staff told the commission's Oct. 15 work session the hearing starts at 1:30 p.m. in Council Chambers and will move to the Phoenix Building if it runs past about 5:45 p.m.

The Oct. 15 work session previewed the fight inside the growth-plan amendment. The master plan sets a 4,000-square-foot commercial "concurrency" threshold for its village and town centers; the draft text lets "retail-ready" ground floors in residential buildings satisfy it. Commissioner Michler objected: "We listened to the developers and really scaled back that concurrency requirement all the way down to 4,000 square foot, which is basically one restaurant." Michler said they could not support a text under which a developer need not "put one restaurant in this entire expansion area." Michler proposed keeping the two ideas separate, so that town-center ground floors are retail-ready and 4,000 square feet of commercial space is still required after a set number of units. Principal Planner Daniel Crum said he had been in contact with Michler about "tweaks." Kenzie Gleason, presenting the subdivision amendment, said it requires traffic calming every 250 to 300 feet on streets with on-street parking, street trees on all streets, and alleys of 12 feet when a lot also fronts a public street or 20 feet when the alley is the only access, "and there's a plan before you right now that is designed like this." Traci Wade, planning manager for planning services in the Division of Planning, also distributed a draft 2027 meeting and filing schedule, with no major changes, for approval Oct. 22.

Asked at the end of that session when a data-center text amendment would come back, planning staff said the council "essentially set aside the ZOTA that you all sent them." "All they really did to advance that was go back in and just strike the word data processing center from it," the staff member said. "Everything else that you all did as far as size and energy use and all that is not included in the ZOTA that's advancing." Council wants a new zoning category for data centers, the staff member said, and did not expect work on it before the election. That stripped ordinance, which deletes computer and data processing centers from six zones, had first reading Oct. 8; a motion by Council Member Emma Curtis to suspend the rules and pass it that night fell short of the 10 votes required. Council Member Liz Sheehan opposed the shortcut: "We already have a moratorium in place until October 31st. And right now, these items would have second reading on October 22nd, so it will still be within that window." The council extended the moratorium to Oct. 31, 2027, at the same Oct. 8 meeting and gave first reading to a resolution asking the Planning Commission to draft a separate data-center zone; a motion to pass that resolution the same night failed for lack of a second. Also given first reading Oct. 8, and so eligible for second reading Thursday, was the ordinance rezoning 512 and 518 E. Main St. to B-2A for Cowgill Development's Lexingtonian.

The Board of Adjustment meets next on Monday, Nov. 9, with the postponed Woodlake, Barnes Mill, Wolter, Embry and Lawson cases joining the filings reported last week, including YPK Motorsports' rehearing at the former Walgreens on East New Circle Road and the equine short-term rental at 3787 Winchester Road. Staff told the board its 2027 schedule will be adopted that day.

Methods: The Lexington Times reads every Planning Division record updated on LFUCG's Accela Citizen Access portal each week and downloads the new attachments. This week that was one plat, read from a 170-dot-per-inch render of the drawing rather than machine-extracted text. Board of Adjustment and council proceedings were checked against the Granicus meeting video and the archive at meetings.lexingtonky.news; Board of Adjustment quotes from Oct. 12 come from the Granicus closed-caption track for clip 6905; quotes from the Aug. 10 Law Department presentation come from the archive's Whisper transcript of clip 6847. The board votes electronically without reading tallies aloud, so no vote counts are reported for its cases. Speaker names are as rendered by the caption track unless verified against another record; the spelling of Coritta Roberts-Chadwell's name is from a January 2025 Spectrum News profile of the program, Alexander Mulhall's from his firm's announcement, and Michelle Kunic's is as captioned. Ownership and sale data are from the Fayette PVA roll as captured June 11, 2026, and may not reflect later transfers. Accela status labels such as "Open" and "New Document Uploaded" are workflow states, not decisions. Figures given by applicants and their engineers are attributed to them. No comment was sought from the applicants for this report.