Lexingtonians, there is an invisible “For Sale” sign in our front yard.

Our government is so full of loopholes and suggestive plans, that anyone with the funding can invade the city and throw up a building that will forever change Lexington’s landscape.

Lexington residents had a fast one pulled over them when the CentrePointe project was suddenly announced, and their downtown fell apart only months later. Their input had little effect on the developer’s plan.

Whether we like it or not, the CentrePointe project will go on. Developer Woodford Webb wanted his hotel and he has it.

Some groups are still in staunch opposition of the project and the currently snow-covered eyesore doesn’t alleviate any of the frustration for Preserve Lexington and other groups. Others would rather have a mudpit than the old, crumbling building that once sat on the square between Main, South Limestone, Vine and Upper streets.

“It’s been festering, rotting, decaying for decades,” Lexington-Fayette Urban County Councilman Ed Lane said of the block in a Tuesday’s Kernel article. “It was like a pimple on the community, and now it’s been removed.”

Despite appeals and opposition, Webb was still able to demolish the block where The Dame, Mia’s, and Buster’s once sat. Appeals by preservation groups held Webb’s building permit for 90 days, but the way the law currently is written allowed Webb to raze all the buildings, even though he couldn’t start building his own. Those appeals, intended to save those buildings, were meaningless by the time a hearing actually occurred.

With that, what stops any developer from buying up pieces of downtown, destroying the block and building a skyscraper, even if the entire city is against the project? The sad answer: Nothing.

In 2006, the Council adopted the Downtown Master Plan. That plan had several recommendations to help improve this area of Lexington. Part of that suggestion was to increase permanent residential development and limit building heights. CentrePointe exceeds the height recommendation by 20 floors.

Instead of writing the Downtown Master Plan in law, the plan was left as a set of suggestions. Nothing in the plan has to be followed. This makes the plan, and the study it came from, meaningless.

“Personally, I think it’s an amazing plan, but unfortunately, none of it’s written into ordinance, so it’s anything goes downtown,” Preserve Lexington director Eric Thomason said in the Kernel article.

Anything goes downtown? That is not what is best for the city.

It is essential for the Urban County Council to take the suggestions of the Downtown Master Plan and write them into law. Until they do, projects like CentrePointe, which was privately planned and surprise announced on the community, will continue to happen.