An aging residential street near Jennie Stuart Medical Center might not look like prime real estate but to a group of investors who grew up in the neighborhood, it represents a statement about what’s possible.
The Lincoln Real Estate Development Group’s first new house in Hopkinsville was recently completed on West Edmunds Street, where the partners held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday to celebrate.
About a hundred people attended, including friends, city officials and a young couple expecting their second child who will rent the three-bedroom, two-bath house.
The Lincoln Group’s founders include chief executive officer Chris Whitney, a retired professional basketball player, and chief operating officer Frederick Taylor, who is a real estate broker now based in Tampa, Florida.
Whitney, who lives in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, told Hoptown Chronicle that the investors plan to construct more than 150 new houses in the city’s oldest neighborhoods. They have already purchased a couple dozen lots through the Landbank Authority, which handles properties that have changed hands through foreclosure, said Mayor James R. Knight Jr.
“This is what it means to give back,” said Dr. James Calleroz White, a childhood friend of Whitney and Taylor who spoke on behalf of the Lincoln Group’s leadership team. “This is what it looks like when those who care deeply about this place put their time, their energy and their treasure to bring this place back up.”
White, headmaster of a large private school in Atlanta, recalled moving 13 times while growing up in Hopkinsville. He said the experience taught him how important it is to have good housing.
Whitney said the group will build a mix of homes for sale and rent. “We want it to be affordable, but something nice and unique,” he said.
Others involved in the Lincoln Group include chief growth officer Mike Goss, who lives in Baltimore and Clarksville, Tennessee, and chief financial officer Lorenzo Howard, who lives near Miami.
Officials with the mayor’s office and Community and Development Services have been meeting with the investors for several months to discuss plans.
“They are going to be [building] on many other streets in Hopkinsville,” Knight said in an interview after the ribbon cutting.
He said the Lincoln Group’s plans mirror his Growing Home initiative, which focuses on “comprehensive public safety, broader economic development, improvements in city cleanliness, and increased support for city staff …”
The first house, a modern architectural style, can serve as a “living example” of what’s possible in Hopkinsville, said White.
The investors who spoke Saturday, all Black men who grew up in Hopkinsville and achieved professional success after moving away, said they have been thinking for years about ways to help their hometown.
“The dream didn’t start a year ago,” said White. “This started many, many years ago when we were still in school, when we would talk about what it meant to come back and give back, when we would talk about what this community could be and not just what it is.”
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
