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A building on a block connecting downtown Lexington to the University of Kentucky campus area will soon be home to luxury short-term rentals.
ARW Investments is converting the building at 102 West High Street into three short-term rental units that can accommodate up to 16 guests in total. Units can be rented individually, or guests can rent the entire building for their stay.
The building will also have two retail spaces and an interior courtyard for rental guests to use. There will be six off-street parking spots reserved for guests on a nearby parking lot owned by Calvary Baptist Church.
ARW Investments was started last year by Danny Albertson, Jake Weisman and Daniel Rogers. Albertson told the Herald-Leader the three began their partnership with the intention of restoring historic buildings that had fallen into disrepair.
“This city’s so cool,” Albertson said. “It’s such a vibrant small little city, and is having so much success with tourism these days that we just want to bring a top-notch, first-class experience for people coming in to visit.”
The three purchased the High Street building in April. The project will be called The Madison Ayres, an homage to the building’s original name of The Madison House and to its original resident, silversmith Samuel Ayres.
“All three of us just appreciate the history behind downtown Lexington,” Albertson said. “We’re just trying to bring the historical stuff into a modern era … the cool architecture, the 150-year-old floors that we’re recovering right now.”
They hope to have the renovations complete and the doors open to guests by the time Breeders’ Cup kicks off in October.
The building, constructed in 1810, sits at the corner of West High Street and South Limestone. The popular Jefferson Davis Inn restaurant and bar operated on and off at the building from the 1970s until its closing in 1996. Other restaurants also worked out of the building, including Breeze’s and Bombay Bar and Grill.
Bleed Blue Ink tattoo shop and Buddy’s Bud Co THC and CBD shop currently occupy the building’s retail spaces. They will both be staying at the building for now, Albertson said.
Albertson said because the costs of the renovations are so high, it made more financial sense to use the building as short-term rentals rather than long-term apartments. The building will require a new roof, new gutters, some reset bricks and major improvements to supportive structure of the house.
“We are putting significant financial capital into the building to get it structurally sound and ready to go, so the model of doing long-term rentals just could not work financially with that,” he said.
The block of South Limestone that The Madison Ayres sits on the corner of has had mixed success for businesses in recent years. Calvary Baptist Church owns two properties at 212 and 216 South Limestone that were vacant for all of the 2020s. The church tore down those buildings last week to replace them with green space.
Soundbar, once one of Lexington’s gay bars, closed in late 2022. It was replaced by a vape shop that closed earlier this year, and the building is currently boarded up.
A burger and sandwich joint called Southern Deli and Tavern was open from 2019 to 2023 at 208 South Limestone. The building is now a rental property.
Albertson said The Madison Ayres will hopefully be just the first of ARW’s downtown projects.
“We have our eyes open for the next build and the next remodel site. We’re open to hearing from people out there that have buildings that they just don’t have the energy or the vision to do something with,” he said..
