Tell someone you’re from Davis Bottom, they’ll look down on you.

It’s a common feeling in the Bottom, a small pocket of homes close to campus, an area of town that is now changing rapidly for the first time in its 140-year history.

In the next five years, an extension of Newtown Pike will begin as a four-lane boulevard at Main Street and cut through the Bottom, about a 10-minute drive from UK, and will stretch to the university, where South Broadway meets Scott Street.To make room for the extension, the century-old wooden houses that run along De Roode Street will be demolished. The tan-and-emerald-green temporary houses now sitting in what was once a park will be replaced by new homes. The Methodist church on De Roode Street will be moved across the street, and a barrier will also be added near the railroad tracks to keep the dull roar of passing trains from being heard.

Maranna Roe, who grew up in the Bottom, said she hopes the changes in the neighborhood will change the way outsiders look at her part of town.

“Everybody puts De Roode Street down, but we’re four blocks away from downtown Lexington,” Roe said. “ …

You know, every place you go, you’ve got good people and bad people.”

If the neighborhood is anything, it’s people, connected by their shared victories and losses, births and deaths.

It’s Maranna Roe, going to culinary school to achieve her dream of setting up a restaurant in the Bottom.

It’s Kenneth Demus, the single father raising his children in the Bottom, hoping for a good future for them.

It’s their friends, their families, their neighbors.

It’s Davis Bottom.

A changing community with lasting ties

Pulling out of the steady flow of traffic on Versailles Road, down the narrow, pothole-marked road to Davis Bottom, it hits you.

Silence.

Driving down the hill, past the houses and auto repair shops, it’s hard to hear much besides the distant hum of traffic and the occasional roar of a passing train on the other side of De Roode Street.

At the base of the valley, in the Bottom, it’s not much different. Along De Roode Street sits a row of small, silent homes — wooden structures, most empty. Patterson Office Tower is visible from the street.

It’s a place where the 100-year-old houses have begun to disappear, in various stages of being uninhabited, boarded up or torn down as the city plans the 1.5-mile extension.

They have been replaced by rows of temporary housing for the people living in Davis Bottom — 16 buildings now rest in the heart of the Bottom — and Lexington plans on constructing new homes for the people living there.

It’s not that residents have a problem with the plans. It’s just a change, a big one, to the community sitting in a part of town that many students within driving distance never even see.

Kenneth Demus, who has lived in the Bottom for 36 years, said he thinks the new housing will be a blessing.

As a child growing up in the Bottom, his classmates sometimes treated him differently.

“People said, ‘Where are you from?’ and as soon as you said you were from here, people looked down on you like you were a piece of dirt,” Demus said.

Demus, a school bus driver and a single father, said he has worked hard to make a living and provide his four children with an education.

“I don’t want (my children) to go to school and have (the other children) say, ‘Oh you’re from Davis Bottom, you’re never going to make it.’ ”

In addition to problems with the old houses — they were hard to heat, for example — Demus hopes the new homes will make people look at the community differently.

In an effort to ease the transition between old homes and new ones, Lexington created a community land trust, intended in part to make housing more affordable for residents who are relocated for the project. The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government owns the land, leasing lots to those who want to live in Davis Bottom.

The trust is the first time the Federal Highway Administration, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the city of Lexington have worked on such an effort, said Andrew Grunwald, a city engineer who has been working on the project since 2000. Lexington has been planning on building a road through a portion of Davis Bottom for about four decades, although the plan was set into motion about 10 years ago.

But for Grunwald, the most challenging part wasn’t the mechanics of the roads and sewers — it was building a connection with people in the community. He said he has built a relationship with people in Davis Bottom to try and build a level of trust and hear concerns.

“The more you talk with people, the more likely they are to listen to you,” Grunwald said.

Nathaniel United Methodist Mission, the church on De Roode Street, and then-pastor Deborah Witmer, played an important role in building a connection between the community of Davis Bottom and the city.

The Mission has held an integral role in the Bottom. For many years, the church has provided medical services and clothing to the people who couldn’t afford it. Susie West-Hall, who was married to the long-time church pastor, said she is especially proud of the education the church was able to provide for the people living there. She also said the ability to feed the hungry has been important, especially in a community that is hurting.

“I’ve seen God do miracles here — lots of miracles,” West-Hall said. “But there are needs here too — lots of needs.”

Some people in the Bottom struggle to afford clothes or even food, West-Hall said. Helping the people get into new houses in the neighborhood is a blessing, she said.

Maranna Roe is among several community members who want to add to the Bottom. They plan on having a yard sale to raise money for a swing set, a place to cook out and a basketball court. She, and others, are waiting on grass to be sewn in the portion of the Bottom with temporary housing.

Roe is also planning a big personal change, something she’s wanted for about 25 years — she’s studying at Bluegrass Community and Technical College to be a chef. She wants to start a restaurant and offer catering.

She already has a name picked out for her restaurant, which will serve down-home cooking: “A Little Taste of Heaven Will Do.”

She believes the restaurant will be part of the community. Jokingly, Roe says she’ll probably give away more food than she sells because she wants to give food to the people that come in hungry and unable to afford anything.

For 40 years, the Bottom has waited. Now, the community is looking forward to the change, the progress and their new homes.

Demus said change in Davis Bottom, he hopes, will help people change the way they see the area and he looks forward to the first day he can move into his new home, when he can stand on the front porch “with a smile as wide as my head.”

“This is my home, this is where I was raised at,” Demus said. “You know, when they tear it down it will look different, but the memories will still be here.”

He’ll still have Davis Bottom.