Conservation Easements and Purchase of Development Rights in Fayette County

What Purchase of Development Rights actually means

A Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) program works by separating a property's development potential from the land itself: a landowner voluntarily sells (or, in some programs, donates in exchange for tax benefits) the right to ever subdivide or develop their land beyond its current agricultural use, and that right is then permanently extinguished through a recorded conservation easement rather than being resold to someone else. The landowner keeps the land, keeps farming it, keeps the right to sell the property itself -- but the buyer of that property, and every owner after them, inherits the same permanent restriction against non-agricultural development.

Fayette County runs its own version of this mechanism under its Rural Land Management Plan, aimed squarely at the Bluegrass horse-farm landscape in the Rural Service Area outside Lexington's urban growth boundary. In broad terms, the county (typically working alongside state agricultural-conservation funding sources and sometimes private land-trust partners) compensates a willing farm owner for permanently retiring the land's development rights, with the easement recorded against the property's deed so the restriction runs with the land indefinitely.

Why Fayette County built this program specifically

The program exists because zoning and an urban growth boundary alone, however durable, are still policy choices that a future political decision could in principle revisit or expand -- a PDR easement is a permanent, recorded property-law restriction that doesn't depend on zoning staying the same. For a horse-farm-heavy county sitting directly adjacent to a growing mid-size city, that permanence matters: it locks in rural land use on specific enrolled farms regardless of how future development pressure or boundary politics play out, reinforcing the Urban Service Area line with something more durable than a zoning map.

The program has been operating for a meaningful period and has permanently protected a substantial share of Fayette County's horse-farm acreage -- concentrated in, though not necessarily limited to, the most horse-farm-dense parts of the Rural Service Area. Exact current protected-acreage totals and program funding levels are the kind of figures that shift over time as new farms enroll, and this page does not assert a specific current number -- confirm directly with the program office for up-to-date figures.

What an enrolled easement means for a buyer, and what to check

If you're evaluating a rural Fayette County farm, whether it already carries a recorded PDR easement is one of the single most consequential facts to confirm before you buy -- an enrolled farm cannot be subdivided or converted to non-agricultural development regardless of what future zoning might otherwise allow, which is either exactly what a buyer wants (permanently protected horse-farm character, often reflected in the purchase price) or a serious constraint for a buyer hoping to eventually develop part of the land, depending entirely on your intent.

On the other side, if you own or are buying land that is not yet enrolled, the PDR program is worth investigating on its own merits: it can generate real compensation for permanently retiring development rights you may have no near-term intention of using anyway, while typically still allowing continued farming, an existing residence, and often limited additional agricultural structures under the easement's specific terms.

1. Ask the seller and title company directly whether the parcel carries a recorded PDR/conservation easement, and if so, request the full easement document rather than relying on a summary.
2. Read the easement's specific terms carefully -- what it does and does not permit (additional residences, agricultural structures, home-based business use) varies by easement and matters enormously for your intended use.
3. If considering enrollment on unencumbered land, contact the Fayette County PDR program office directly for current eligibility criteria, the application process, and how compensation is currently determined.
4. Confirm with the Fayette County Clerk that any easement shown in program records is also properly reflected in the recorded chain of title for the specific parcel.