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The Lexington City Planning Commission last week voted to approve a conditional use permit for Washington and Lee University to construct a new student health center on East Denny Circle on the university’s campus. The building was not included in the school’s 2022 master plan, which is why officials needed to apply for a conditional use permit to allow the construction of the building.
Through the end of the 202223 school year, the student health center had been housed in Davis Hall, which was demolished over the summer.
The original plan was to move the health center and the student counseling center into the new building being built on the site of Davis and Baker halls along with the Williams School of Commerce Economics and Politics. The site was determined to not be big enough for all three uses in the same building, however, so a new building for the health center and counseling center is being built.
Last September, the Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit to convert a building on General’s Lane, which had previously held the university’s Development/ Advancement Department, into a temporary home for the student health center The new building will be constructed in an undeveloped portion of campus on East Denny Circle, near the school’s football field and tennis courts. Though the conditional use permit was simply to allow the school to proceed with building a medically related facility on the campus and not as much on the designs for the building, W&L university planner Hugh Latimer included some preliminary designs with the application, which show that the footprint of the two-story building will total a little over 1,000 square feet. City planner Arne Glaeser noted that a site plan for the building would come before the Planning Commission at a later date.
“It looks like a beautiful building and I think it’s in the right place,” said Commissioner Gladys Hopkins. “I don’t really have a problem with it at all.”
Commissioner John Driscoll also expressed his support for the building, noting that since the location is within the main campus of the school, that it was “really in the university’s purview to … have flexibility with what it wants to do there.”
Hopkins moved to approve the conditional use permit, with Mary Stuart Harlow providing the second. The motion passed in a 4-0 vote. Planning Commission Chair Pat Bradley and Commissioners Jon Eastman and Leslie Straughan each recused themselves from the discussion and vote on the permit, citing connections to the school as creating a conflict of interest. Eastman is employed by the university, while Bradley and Straughan’s spouses work for the school.
