The carousel in Festival Market, now called Triangle Center, on July 25, 1994, three days after the carousel and the building were sold at auction. The 12-horse carousel, 22 feet in diameter, was bought by politician and Lexington caterer Jerry Lundergan for $35,000. He tried to sell it to the Lexington Children’s Museum for the same price he paid for it. Mayor Pam Miller said the city had considered buying the carousel for the museum, but there wasn’t the money to buy it or someone to run it, and “there is no extra space in the Children’s Museum,” she said. Lundergan eventually sold the carousel to Tom’s Farms, a produce and amusement complex in Corona, Calif. It remains in use there today. The carousel, built in San Francisco in 1986, was “a beautiful piece of equipment,” Lundergan said after the auction. “It was the showpiece of Festival Market.” The carousel was always popular and added to the vibrancy of the mall, said Dudley Webb, partner with the Webb Cos., which developed the downtown Lexington shopping center. The $16 million, three-story mall opened in 1986 as Lexington Festival Market, designed as an upscale center with dozens of shops and restaurants. While children rode the merry-go-round on the top floor, a jazz pianist played lunchtimes in the courtyard below. However, the mall, which was expected to have as many as 70 businesses, never found its niche, and it lost money each year since it opened. At the time of the auction, it was being converted from an upscale center to a factory outlet mall. It was developed by the Webb Cos. in partnership with Kentucky Central Life Insurance Co., but when the insurance company failed in 1993, the mall was placed in receivership. The estimated debt of the mall was more than $13 million, according to court records. The Webbs had managed the mall since it opened but gave up, citing frustration over efforts to revitalize it. A judge’s order dissolved the partnership between The Webb Cos. and Kentucky Central, and the building went to auction, where it sold for $600,000. Photo by Frank Anderson | Staff