Landscape architect lays out plan for Town Branch Commons in downtown Lexington

A conceptual view of the Cox Street parking lot portion of the proposed Town Branch Commons in Lexington. The rendering was provided by SCAPE/Landscape Architecture, which won a competition to work on the commons. SCAPE next will create a detailed drawing of the commons and include engineering information. Image provided.

Jane Shropshire lives on a farm in eastern Fayette County, but she came to a public presentation of plans for Town Branch Commons in downtown Lexington on Wednesday and afterward said she was delighted with what she heard.

"If they could do something like this for downtown, it would be transformative. It would make downtown feel alive, instead of like a sterile canyon cars travel through," Shropshire said.

Kate Orff, a partner in SCAPE/Landscape Architecture, laid out the plans for about 75 people at the Downtown Arts Center. The New York firm won an international competition sponsored by the Downtown Development Authority in 2012 to design the downtown park.

Town Branch flows through karst geology full of holes that underlies the inner Bluegrass. "In karst hydrology, water doesn't move in one long, straight stream," Orff said. "It can drop through a sinkhole and emerge in boils like at McConnell Springs. It moves through karst windows, falls and sinks."

Her firm studied how these karst hydrologic features could be interpreted in a new downtown landscape.

The conceptual plan shows a slender greenway stretching from Winchester Road, down Midland Avenue, along Vine Street and around Rupp Arena to join with where Town Branch now comes to the surface in its natural state.

Town Branch now flows along that route but is buried in one and sometimes two underground culverts, Orff said.

Vine Street would be changed to a two-way boulevard. Along a portion of Vine would be fountains, a series of pools, and a public plaza and playground call the Karst Commons. On the west side of Rupp Arena, the SCAPE plan visualizes a waterfall dropping from High Street where the land changes grade. That section would be called The Hollow, with a large lawn and a grassy amphitheater.

Orff said developing Town Branch Commons would bring green to a beige downtown made up of tall concrete buildings.

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Landscape architect lays out plan for Town Branch Commons in downtown Lexington