Firm that bales horse-stall muck has an eye on Midway Station, but is discouraged by prospect of court action

By Al Cross and Aaron Gershon
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media

A Lexington firm that services horse farms says it may want to put a facility in Midway Station that would bale the muck it takes from stalls and ship it on flatbed trucks to Tennessee mushroom farms.

The prospect of Creech Services Inc. offering to buy five to six acres in the industrial park raised the possibility of a court action to determine whether the facility would be allowed under a restriction placed on the property after Bluegrass Stockyards tried to relocate there 13 years ago.

The restriction by the Woodford County Economic Development Authority, which was part of the settlement of a lawsuit over the stockyards plan, bans "the composting of animal waste." Creech says that it would not compost the material, and that it contains only 1 percent manure.

However, EDA Chair John Soper said at the authority's May 22 meeting that sale of Midway Station property for such a facility would require a petition for a declaratory judgment "to determine if it could exist under settlement of the lawsuit regarding the stockyards."

Soper, some board members and Mayor Grayson Vandegrift spoke about the matter in past tense, as if it had been decided, but Soper said in an email after the meeting that no decision had been made.

He said EDA attorney Bill Moore had advised that a sale would require a declaratory-judgment lawsuit, in which a judge determines the rights of the parties involved. "If Mr. Creech wants to pursue a formal offer (no actual or informal offer has been made to date) he would need to be prepared to pursue the matter at his expense to clear the stockyard lawsuit's restrictions," Soper wrote.

Google map has outdated city limits; city has annexed and zoned industrial
138 acres north and east of Midway Station. For a larger image, click on it.

He said during the meeting that such an action would cost at least $2,500 and bring "people from the lawsuit back into Midway Station." The settlement gives any resident of Northridge Estates or Ironworks Estates, or any member of Elkwood LLC, a property owner across Georgetown Road from Midway Station, the right to enforce the restrictions.

Tom Creech, president of the firm, told the Midway Messenger, "I don't want to go to court. . . . I want somebody to want us." He said he might make another approach to EDA after the outcome of a business meeting he has scheduled for Friday.

Creech said Wednesday that he hadn't talked with Soper since before last Friday's meeting, and if he decided to pursue Midway Station land again, "My approach would be to go to the mayor of Midway" and invite him to look at his baling facility in Fayette County, which is separate from his composting facility.

"I don’t want to be the bad neighbor to anybody," Creech said. "I would never propose to put in a compost facility in that park." He said he would like to have a baling facility in Woodford County because he serves so many farms in the county.

"You all depend on these horse farms and the waste off them is an issue, and you ought to be glad I'm getting rid of it," he told the Messenger. His firm also supplies hay and straw to farms. He estimated that a Midway Station facility would employ eight to 10 people, including drivers who work the farms. He said he hires common-carrier trucks to ship the bales.

Vandegrift said Wednesday that he would like to see the baling facility, but he and Soper are concerned about creating no more than 10 jobs by selling five or six acres. Earlier, he noted that EDA and the city want to create at least 10 jobs per acre in Midway Station.

"I do appreciate the fact that it's supporting the horse industry, but just from a dollars-and-cents standpoint, he's got to understand if it were to be something that might end up being litigated, and might be controversial . . . I'd have to explain to people why it was worth it," Vandegrift said. "What butters our bread in Midway is occupational taxes, and this is low jobs." 

However, the mayor said he would not oppose the sale "if there's no smell that bothers neighbors. We don’t want to stir up the ghost of the past." He said, "Overall, I think it's an industry people would support," but "At the end of the day, we just had a lot of unanswered questions."

Creech said the material "smells like a horse barn" and didn't know how far its smell would carry, but argued that prevailing winds wouldn’t waft the smell to Northridge Estates.

Another smell could yet be at work: the smell of money. At Friday's meeting, Soper said selling the property at EDA's price of $65,000 an acre would generate a $97,000 profit that would pay one and a half years' interest on the mortgages for Midway Station. "You gotta have cash to stay alive," he said.

Later in the meeting, Vandegrift said of prospective Midway Station buyers, "A lot of people might be very surprised to know that we've turned down as many as we've accepted … for similar reasons or the same reason."