With so much shut down to help stop spread of the coronavirus, many Mentelle Neighborhood residents are trying to support local restaurants by ordering takeout meals when they can. Mentelle Park resident Selma Owens wants you to know that her shop, Selma’s Catering (corner of Henry Clay Boulevard and Liberty Road), is open for call-in (859.971.2763) and online ordering for curbside pickup.
Selma’s serves lunch sandwiches and salads, hot lunch specials and soup-of-the-day. The shop also has dinner entrees, salads and desserts and is updating menu selections several times a week. Wine and beer are available with food orders. To see the menu, go to Selmascatering.com . Hours for pickup are 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
The Mentelle Neighborhood Association has canceled the annual Easter egg hunt and book swap, which was scheduled for April 11. Because Fayette County Public Schools are closed until at least April 20, board members thought we should not be hosting a large gathering of families.
Other annual events, such as the neighborhood cleanup and yard sale, will not be scheduled until we know more about how long recommended coronavirus precautions remain in effect. Watch Mentelle.org for updates.
Sewer line renovation on the front half of Mentelle Park began Monday as equipment was moved into place. Most street parking in the affected area has been restricted. City officials say the project will take about two months. Click here to read an earlier post about the project.
Meanwhile, Columbia Gas has suspended all service line upgrades that are part of its pipeline replacement projects, including those recently begun in the Mentelle and Bell Court neighborhoods. The company said it stopped work on the service lines to homes to protect the health and safety of customers and employees.
In some neighborhoods, residents will still see crews working on the main line replacements. In others, crews have been pulled because the only work left on the projects is to replace service lines. All emergency line repairs, however, will continue. Click here for more information.
Also, Columbia Gas said it has suspended shutoffs for nonpayment for customers struggling financially because of the coronavirus pandemic. Click here for more information.
Columbia Gas spokeswoman Risa Richardson urges residents to check the company’s Facebook and Twitter feeds for project updates.
City contractors will be on Mentelle Park for the next couple of months repairing and replacing damaged storm and sanitary sewer lines. The street was built in 1905.
Sally Lambert-Warfield, legislative aide to our late Councilman Jake Gibbs, reports that sanitary sewer line segments highlighted in yellow on this satellite image of the south end of Mentelle Park will be dug up and replaced. Contractors think other sanitary sewer repairs can be made without surface digging.
The scope of work on storm sewers will have to be determined on-site, project managers told Lambert-Warfield, because collapsed lines have made it difficult to assess their condition with video cameras. However, project managers think the work would be close enough to the sanitary sewer lines to avoid further impact on the street.
Project managers told Lambert-Warfield that the contractor, Leak Eliminators, will begin notifying neighbors when they have an exact start date for the work.
I will send out an update when I have more information.
The longtime minister of one of Mentelle Neighborhood’s three houses of worship has died. James B. “Bennie” Hill, minister of the Cramer and Hanover Church of Christ for 45 years, died Tuesday at age 74. A full obituary is on Kentucky.com. Condolences to his family and congregation.
Lexington’s Public Art Commission is working on a master plan to create more public art in our community. The commission is seeking your ideas and opinions. You can give them on a survey here: bit.ly/publicartlexington
Among the things commission members want to know is specific areas in neighborhoods that could be enhanced through public art. (Unfortunately, because of health concerns, a public meeting scheduled for March 26 has been canceled.)
All Mentelle neighborhood residents are invited to a wine tasting social on Tuesday, March 3, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at Wilson’s Grocery and Meat, 1010 Cramer Ave. Gary Doernberg of Corner Wine (835 Euclid Ave.) will present tastings from his stock. Wilson’s will provide appetizers such as their house-made chicken salad, beer cheese, ham salad, and a charcuterie board with their house-made meats.
A $5 donation is requested to help cover event costs.
This is a great opportunity for adults in the neighborhood to socialize with neighbors and become more familiar with some of our fine locally owned businesses.
Schilling Properties’ application to rezone 706 Aurora Ave. from single-family residential to business will not be heard at Thursday’s meeting of the city Planning Commission. It has been postponed until the commission’s March 26 meeting because a participant in the case has the flu.
From Jim Ryder, leader of the MNA committee studying issues surrounding proposed city legislation about auxiliary dwelling units and short-term rentals:
After a short break to concentrate on the Blue Door issue we need to restart our Mentelle ADU committee. Our next meeting is scheduled for March 3, 7 p.m. at 716 Aurora Ave. We will revisit our work to date and plan for the future from there. We are close to reaching consensus that the committee favors a controlled introduction of ADUs into our neighborhood. However this issue is far from settled in the wider community.
Also, please come to the “after planning commission party” at 716 Aurora Ave. on Friday (Feb. 28) at 7 p.m. We hope to celebrate a significant compromise with the Blue Door. If not, we will begin our next steps. In any case, we will have beer, wine and refreshments.
Shilling Properties is seeking to rezone 706 Aurora Ave., where it demolished a house last year, from residential to business for an expansion of Blue Door Smokehouse.
Schilling Properties has agreed to four concessions in response to our concerns over the proposed rezoning of 706 Aurora Avenue and the expansion of Blue Door Smokehouse.
We still need to see these conditions in writing, and negotiations are ongoing.
But the MNA board is encouraged that these discussions could produce a solution that the neighborhood would want to support.
This compromise would need strong neighborhood support – in emails and person – to win approval because it conflicts with the traffic planner’s recommendation that all Blue Door traffic exit onto Aurora. We would be asking the Planning Commission to override the staff recommendation and allow Blue Door traffic to continue to exit onto Walton but in an organized, engineer-designed way.
While many of us would prefer no rezoning of 706 Aurora from residential to business, we also recognize that we could lose before the Planning Commission and Urban County Council, and then gain nothing to protect the neighborhood.
As you may recall, the Schilling plan called for all the Blue Door traffic to exit onto Aurora, via two driveways, one in front of the restaurant and one behind.
The Planning Commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27, in the Council chambers of the government building, second floor, 200 East Main. We expect that the compromise plan will be offered then in place of what was originally proposed.
These are the conditions offered Friday night by attorney Dick Murphy to MNA President Ann Olliges:
* Deed restriction against rezoning 708 Aurora to business for 20 years, void if 710 Aurora is rezoned for business before then. (Schilling owns 708 Aurora.)
* No exits for restaurant customers onto Aurora Avenue. Entrances and exits will be off Walton Avenue. Garbage trucks will be able to access the dumpster via 706 Aurora but the space for garbage trucks will not connect to the new customer parking lot/s.
* Expansion should be compatible with neighborhood. Vinyl restrictions on the expansion. (No vinyl on the walls but OK on soffits and windows.)
* Blue Door’s off-street parking remains.
The city’s planning staff has offered these conditions, which the MNA board supports:
* No drive-through window.
* No outdoor audio amplification.
* Height limit on outdoor lighting.
We’ll provide more info as we get it.
Meanwhile, if you like this compromise and are working on a letter, here are a few things you could urge the Planning Commission to consider:
Allow Blue Door traffic to exit onto Walton. It already exits onto Walton but in a disorganized free-for-all way. Schilling owns three contiguous lots – 222, 224, 226 Walton – all zoned B-1. So there is plenty of space to organize traffic flow and standardize the weird corner at Walton and Aurora without funneling the traffic onto a narrow street where families with young children live.
Allowing the Blue Door traffic to continue to exit onto Walton will not appreciably increase the traffic on Walton because Blue Door traffic already exits onto Walton.
The Planning Commission should protect our neighborhood because it has all the qualities that the city is seeking in Lexington’s core.
We want a walkable neighborhood that’s safe for pedestrians and bicycles. The traffic planner approved a plan that would have restaurant traffic crossing the sidewalk on Aurora in two places.
The neighborhood has worked with the developer and the business to find a solution.
Blue Door might move but B-1 zoning is forever. Once the rezoning is granted, a high-traffic restaurant that’s open all hours could become the tenant. Therefore, it’s important to exclude the possibility of a customer driveway at 706 Aurora.
We need these conditions to protect the livability of a core neighborhood.
With so much shut down to help stop spread of the coronavirus, many Mentelle Neighborhood residents are trying to support local restaurants by ordering takeout meals when they can. Mentelle Park resident Selma Owens wants you to know that her shop, Selma’s Catering (corner of Henry Clay Boulevard and Liberty Road), is open for call-in (859.971.2763) and online ordering for curbside pickup.
The Mentelle Neighborhood Association has canceled the annual Easter egg hunt and book swap, which was scheduled for April 11. Because Fayette County Public Schools are closed until at least April 20, board members thought we should not be hosting a large gathering of families.
The longtime minister of one of Mentelle Neighborhood’s three houses of worship has died. James B. “Bennie” Hill, minister of the Cramer and Hanover Church of Christ for 45 years, died Tuesday at age 74. 
Among the things commission members want to know is specific areas in neighborhoods that could be enhanced through public art. (Unfortunately, because of health concerns, a public meeting scheduled for March 26 has been canceled.)
