Danville, Kentucky · Licensed · Insured · Bonded
New houses and barndominiums built on your own Jessamine County lot, with the clearing, grading, footers and foundation carried by the same crew that frames the house and hands you the keys.
Scott Construction KY LLC puts up new houses on private lots in Nicholasville and right across Jessamine County: clearing and grading the ground, pouring the footers and foundations, framing, drying in, then finishing the house through to the day you walk it room by room.
Ben Scott reads the ground before he writes a number, because on a new build the ground is half of what that number pays for. Which way the lot falls, what sits under the topsoil, where an entrance can come in, and which government permits the work all get answered while he is out there with you.
This is a family owned company. Ben is 28 years into the trades now, and a good share of the early ones went on welding, ironwork and rigging. Scott Construction is licensed, insured and bonded.
Getting up here from the shop means KY 34 east, then north on US 27, which arrives in Nicholasville as Main Street and runs the length of town. Ben put this town on the service map himself, and everything else we build in Nicholasville sits on that same town page.
Jessamine County is putting up new houses at a pace most people would not guess. The Census Bureau’s building permits survey counted 488 new single family homes permitted across the county in 2025, within twenty of the total for Fayette County next door, which holds several times the population.
Inside Nicholasville itself, several hundred homes carry a build date in this decade. That is a town adding streets, not just adding people.
For somebody choosing where to build, that matters in a practical way. Lots reach the market here, ground gets divided, and both permit offices treat new construction as ordinary daily work rather than as an unusual request.
It also means the good ground moves. The questions to answer before you sign for a piece of it are on this page, and what to ask any builder before you hire one covers the rest.
Two governments issue building permits in this county, and on a new house the choice between them is still open while you are out looking at ground.
Inside the Nicholasville city limits, all of it belongs to the city itself. Nicholasville seats a planning commission, keeps a board of adjustment, pays the inspectors who drive out to a site, and lists enforcement of its zoning and building codes among that commission’s published duties.
Past those limits, on every acre no city has taken in and in Wilmore itself, a department those two governments staff jointly does that same work under its own forms and its own procedure.
The divide is the city limit, and it pays no attention to the mail. Ground that reads as Nicholasville on an envelope is often well outside the city, so two lots a mile apart can answer to different desks, different applications and different requirements for the same house.
We settle which one owns your address before a plan is drawn or a number is written, then file there and meet the inspections it sets. None of that lands back on you.
Nicholasville prints them in capitals at the foot of its own building permit application, and both land on new construction specifically.
The first is a Notice of Intent to Disturb Land, filed under Article 16 of the city’s zoning ordinance. New construction has to supply a copy of it for the permit to issue at all, so it is not paperwork that trails the job. It goes in ahead of everything.
The second is erosion control. Silt measures have to be installed and approved by that office before inspections happen, which makes the silt fence part of opening the site rather than a detail anybody adds later.
There is a third requirement worth budgeting time for. A permit application for anything on a permanent foundation arrives with a site plan drawn by an engineer or a land surveyor holding a Kentucky license, marking every setback, easement and utility line on the ground. Open decks and porches are written out of it. A house is not.
None of that is difficult once you know it is coming, and all of it is slow to produce in a hurry. We carry the filings as part of the build, and the zoning district your ground carries sets the envelope the house is designed inside.
This one is genuinely unusual, and it changes how a build gets sequenced inside the city.
Nicholasville runs its own utilities. Electric, water distribution, water treatment and the wastewater system are all city departments, so the power to your new house comes from the same government that issues the permit for it.
The zoning ordinance then draws the two together. No utility service, electric, gas, water or anything else, temporary or permanent, may be connected to a building inside the city until the utility has confirmation from the planning commission office that a valid building permit exists for the property.
Read that once more with a build in mind. Temporary power for the framing crew is a utility connection. So the permit is not paperwork that catches up with the job; it is what switches the site on.
Outside the city limits the utility picture changes with the address, and so does the water and sewer answer, which is the next section.
Jessamine County sits on limestone, and limestone dissolves. That is what produced the Inner Bluegrass, and the Kentucky Geological Survey, at the University of Kentucky, names Nicholasville among the Kentucky cities partly or entirely underlain by karst.
Read the rest of what the Survey says about this county in the same breath, because it is the half that keeps the first half honest. Its topography section records that karst features here are locally conspicuous but do not dominate the landscape. This is farm country on good ground, not a landscape of open sinkholes.
What it does mean is that a foundation here earns its siting. The city’s own subdivision rules require a plan to show storm drainage areas, flood plains, sinkholes and other surface depressions, which is the local government confirming that this is a real consideration rather than an outsider’s theory about Kentucky.
So we read the lot properly: where the surface dips, where water collects and leaves, and how deep the rock sits under the topsoil. Rock close to the surface is a foundation decision, and it is far cheaper as a decision than as a surprise. The same reading settles where the water goes after a hard rain, which is the question a basement lives or dies by.
Because our own crew does the concrete and excavation, the answers come from the people who will be doing the digging.
Plenty of new building in this county happens on ground that is not in any city: a corner of family land, an inherited parcel, acreage bought for the view of the hills.
Out there the joint county and Wilmore department handles the permit, and its residential application asks for things a city lot never raises. Water and waste have to be answered before the permit: a septic evaluation from the health department, or confirmation of a sewer tap from the provider. An entrance onto a state road brings its own encroachment permit. And the site falls under the county’s storm water program, with a signed acknowledgment filed alongside the application.
Rural ground also asks more of the site work itself. A drive to cut in, trees and brush to clear, grading to get right before a single footer is poured. All of that is our own crew and our own machines, on our schedule.
Barndominiums and pole barns belong out here too, raised by the same hands that frame the custom houses. Weighing one of those against a conventional home for a particular piece of land is a conversation Ben has standing on it, looking at both versions of the answer.
And years later, when the family has grown into the house, a home addition comes back to the contractor who put the original walls up.
Whichever one your ground belongs to, and the city limit decides it rather than the county line. A lot inside Nicholasville is permitted and inspected by the city itself. A lot out in Wilmore, or on county ground that no city has taken in, goes instead to the department those two governments share. We pin that down for your address before anything else is decided, then file where it belongs.
Not by the postal address, which is where people come unstuck. Plenty of land with a Nicholasville address lies beyond the line. It is settled from the property record and the city’s zoning map, and it is among the first things Ben checks on a lot walk, because the answer changes the application, the inspections and part of how the house is built.
On new construction inside Nicholasville, two items are printed in capitals on the city’s own application. A copy of the Notice of Intent to Disturb Land, filed under Article 16 of its zoning ordinance, has to be supplied before the permit issues. Silt controls have to be installed and approved by that office before any inspection happens. Anything going on a permanent foundation also arrives with a site plan from a licensed engineer or land surveyor. We take care of the filings.
Worried, no. Informed, yes. The Kentucky Geological Survey names Nicholasville among the Kentucky cities underlain by karst, and also records that karst features in this county are locally conspicuous but do not dominate the landscape. The practical version is that this is limestone country, so a foundation is worth siting properly rather than dropping wherever the view is best. We read the surface for dips and drainage, look at how deep the rock sits, and design the foundation to what is genuinely there.
Inside Nicholasville the city runs the electric utility itself, and its zoning ordinance holds that no utility service, temporary or permanent, is connected to a building in the city until the utility has confirmation that a valid building permit exists for the property. So temporary power follows the permit, and the permit is one of the first things we file rather than one of the last.
Yes, and rural Jessamine County ground is where that kind of building suits best. Pole barns and full barndominium homes are core work for this crew, raised by the same hands that frame the custom houses. Out there the paperwork runs through the county office instead of the city, the septic or sewer answer has to come before the permit, and our own machines do the clearing, grading and concrete that get a site ready.
Tell Ben where the ground is, or call him and talk it over. He reads the lot in person before anybody puts a house on paper. Every job carries a one year workmanship warranty in writing, and on jobs up to $10,000 nothing is due until the work is complete.
