Chevy Chase

Need a neighborhood with some character?

by John Rice

Let’s face it, most neighborhoods feel like exactly what they are….a field stripped of all the trees, subdivided in a way that maximizes the number of lots, then sold to builders who build pretty similar looking houses.

Nothing wrong with that.

Often most neighborhoods are chosen by buyers based on location. What makes a location desirable might be a park, a school, shopping, proximity to their work, a road making for an easy commute.

If you are somebody who wants a neighborhood with a special vibe, here are a few that come to mind:

  1. Chilesburg-Sure, having Hamburg, Jacobson Park and the Interstate so close are nice. Buuuuut the layout of the streets, the neighborhood walking trail and several ponds are what makes this feel so special.
  2. Hartland-While nothing is super close to this part of the Tates Creek area, the beauty is that nothing is far away. Getting to Hamburg, The Summit, Fayette Mall, Downtown and UK are all pretty easy, which is one of my favorite things about the neighborhoods in this whole area. Hartland has such a special vibe that it could offer nothing more than the neighborhood feel and I would still want to live there. What makes it so special? The layout of the streets. It is one of the few neighborhoods in Lexington that doesn’t feel like it was designed to maximize the number of lots. Roads have gentle curves, all of the cul-de-sacs have landscaped medians. Even the entire main road has a landscaped median. All the tall trees that have grown over the past 40 or so years add to the ambiance as well.
  3. Willow Oak-This is one of my favorite neighborhoods in it’s price range. You sort of get it all here. Southend shopping, Shillito Park, great school district PLUS a little stone bridge surrounded by greenspace as the only way in and out. All the streets are lined with gigantic pin oaks.
  4. Chevy Chase & Ashland Park-You didn’t think I had forgotten about these two I hope. They are the most desirable and recognized neighborhoods in all of Lexington. They put the “Ohhhh” in their 40502 zip code. What creates the vibe? Well, you know its the trees, especially a street named Catalpa known for it’s leaves that turn a bright yellow in the fall.You know it’s for the variety of classic and beautifully maintained homes. But what really does it is the design of the neighborhood…..well, more so for Ashland Park. It was designed by some dudes who did a lot of well know landscape architecture projects across the country. They were the sons of the landscape architect credited for designing Central Park in New York City. I could google their names right now, insert it in this paragraph and impress you with the perception that I know everything. Just to be humble, I won’t.

There are others, but these are the ones that tend to come to mind the most.

How old neighborhoods become desirable

by John Rice

There are really two types of old neighborhoods. The kind that always were desirable. Think Chevy Chase Then there are those that became desirable. Think, in varying degrees, Kenwick, The Meadows, Meadowthorpe and Southland.

Chevy Chase is rare. It has never ever gone though any type of normal cycle where there is a decline in desirability. It has the perfect combination of location and character.

What is most common for older neighborhoods is to have gone through one or more cycles of decline. Most were solid middle class neighborhoods when new. Sometimes worse neighborhoods surrounded them and brought them down. Often the owners moved away to newer, more modern suburban neighborhoods in the 1950s through the 1970s. These types of neighborhoods became more and more affordable to subsequent buyers since their spot on the preferred neighborhood hierarchy dropped. Some eventually stabilized. Some keep sliding all the way to the very bottom…..like it if were a Totem Pole, they would be the part that is in the ground.

Kenwick is the perfect example of one that declined to became a stable “C Grade” neighborhood. It worked its way up to “B Grade”, then “A Grade” and is now a legit “A+ Grade” neighborhood. My family moved to Kenwick in the mid 1980s. It was just a blue collar, working class neighborhood. My parents picked it because they loved Chevy Chase but couldn’t afford it at the time. It offered 80% of the location and style for 30% of the price. Over the years I have watched Kenwick go from being the affordable second choice to standing proudly on it’s own two feet. People today pick Kenwick because they love Kenwick, not because it is all they can afford.

The modern equivalent of Kenwick is The Meadows. The Meadows saw a pretty rapid decline in the 70s as most of the new schools, shopping and dining moved towards the south end of town .What was once a solid neighborhood built in the 1950s for returning vets and first time buyers saw a lot of neglect. Many houses became cheap rentals. The foreclosure crisis hit it hard about 15 years ago. With very few affordable older neighborhoods left, it has become a good way to get into an older house and get the old neighborhood vibe for cheap. I don’t really know where future generations will go to fulfill their desire for an older house in an older neighborhood. There aren’t many left. With all the tiny 1000 square foot generic spec homes of the 60s and 70s aging, maybe we will see neighborhoods such as Woodhill, Rookwood, Cardinal Valley and Idle Hour become the trendy spot for affordable older homes. It’s the same formula after all.

Sometimes new development around an older neighborhood helps it become more desirable. Meadowthorpe is prime example of this. When new, it was on the very edge of town. It was probably originally viewed like Masterson Station was in the early days. I remember when Masterson Station was new, people we like “Nice, but why is it all the way out there in the middle of nowhere?” I think few people were even aware of Meadowthorpe when I moved here in the 1980s. It was just some random, cool, neighborhood on a forgotten end of town. Back then, being close to downtown wasn’t as cool as it is now. There was no Distillery District. There wasn’t even that shopping center with Kroger. I think what really helped Meadowthorpe was Masterson Station. Sure, the Distillery District and it’s proximity to downtown contributed, but the continuing development of Master Station solidified the west end of town being part of Lexington instead of feeling like you’re midway to Midway.

Southland is a good example of how a nice, middle of the road neighborhood becomes trendy. It already had a good location on the south end of town between everything out Nicholasville Road and UK. It has always had a good school district. It has always been a nice choice for affordable homes. It seemed like a logical place for people to live and fix up their houses. More and more people starting buying and renovating their houses just as many of the long time owners were leaving. This made prices really shoot up quite a bit in recent years. Today it is common to see extremely nice renovated homes selling for over $500k.

So, if you’ve made it this far, you can see that most old neighborhoods typically become more desirable in these ways:

  1. They already were really desirable-Chevy Chase.
  2. They declined enough to become super affordable and were rejuvenated-Kenwick and The Meadows.
  3. New development and/or changes in the areas-Meadowthorpe.
  4. They were always nice, but became even nicer and more desirable for a variety of reasons-Southland.