League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas County

P.O. Box 1072, Lawrence, Kansas 66044

February 14, 2006

Dr. Terry Riordan, Chairman

Members

Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission

City Hall

Lawrence, Kansas 66044

RE: ITEM NO. 5A: A to RMD; 19.5234 ACRES; NORTH OF OVERLAND DRIVE AND WEST OF QUEENS ROAD (STULTZLAND)

Dear Chairman Riordan and Planning Commissioners:

We ask you to review the process by which you are rezoning this Northwest area under our current ordinance and consider placing a moratorium on further development in Section 29 until the new Land Development Code can be adopted and a  neighborhood plan for this section can be studied and approved.  If not that, then we ask that you consider changing some of the requested rezoning of this Stultzland development.

Regarding the moratorium, Section 29 of the Northwest Plan area was not designed as a neighborhood.  In this section, as in all of the other sections included in the final Northwest Plan, the final Plan ignored the land forms and topographical features, vegetation, soil types, and storm drainage. The bare minimum of streets were proposed and no neighborhood parks, open space or inner neighborhood activity centers, such as schools, shopping or community recreational centers were located or identified as needs. As a result, subdivisions for this section have been presented for approval in seemingly random fashion, now encompassing almost half of the section, many of which have been for duplexes and multiple family. The northernmost portion of Section 29 is rough, difficult for building and it may be many years before this northern half is actually developed to anything approaching urban densities.  Without a neighborhood plan for needed amenities and housing, if further development is permitted we believe that this area may not be sustainable.

If you chose not to institute a moratorium until a neighborhood plan can be adopted, we ask you to use  the lesser change table to reduce the amount of acreage proposed for RMD by either zoning the entire tract for RS-2 or by zoning only the southernmost 295 feet RMD, and to rezone the remainder as RS-2.

Our current zoning Code reads, “Purpose:  The RMD District is designed to provide for duplexes only. Such district is encouraged to be used as a buffer between RM districts and RS districts.” Nineteen acres of RMD zoning is far in excess of what is required to buffer the RS District from the unknown use to the south.  This point is reinforced by Horizon 2020, which states,  “Extensive concentrations of the same housing type or development pattern should be avoided.”  There is already an excessive amount of proposed duplex zoning in this Section. The new Land Development Code will include many more residential choices than heretofore available, and it would be an advantage to developers to wait until the New Code can be adopted.

To summarize, we ask that you consider a moratorium on further development in Section 29 until the new Land Development Code and a neighborhood plan for this section has been adopted. If not that, then we ask that you reduce the amount of RMD zoning in the Stultzland development to the southernmost 295 feet and use the lesser change table to rezone the remainder to RS-2.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely yours,

Alan Black                                                Caleb Morse

Land Use Committee                                 LWV L-DC Board