RUPP Arena

Sustainable urban development requires density.  With the urban growth boundary established in Lexington, the pressure to build moves inward.  Downtown Lexington Kentucky has a unique set of attributes that set it apart from many other American cities, including single-family housing adjacent to the center, outstanding commercial offerings outside of the ‘big box’ typology, two universities with direct link to the downtown core, a largely in-tact Main Street, and a gigantic virtual population linked to the equestrian industry.  The desire for an Arena Arts and Entertainment District in the downtown core has created a pressure to define an identity for a 46 acre site in the proximity of the most densely populated single-purpose college basketball arena in the United States.  The district is situated at one end of the downtown core.

We projected what 30 years of development pressure inside the city limits would mean for the city in order to design a framework for future growth patterns in the downtown core.  We re-defined the focus district as a new central hub for the city (instead of a peripheral big box), and suggested a mirror development scheme. This gave us the opportunity to create identity driven areas — entertainment district west, sports district central, hyper-mix district east — linked by identity driven streets of culture, big business, small business, and service.  The result is a framework for confluence.