Mark Kaplan
1029
City Hall
PO Box 708
Lawrence, Kansas 66044
Dear Commissioners,
I’m writing to remark
upon the proposed zoning reclassification of Lawrence’s original industrial
district, before you now, and the development proposals of Harris Construction,
which is also seeking to build a half-block of apartments, condominiums and
living lofts in the area of the 800-block of Pennsylvania Street – as an
adjunct to their overall plans for the district.
I won’t pretend to fully understand all the issues that are at
stake with the applicant’s proposed zoning classification of C-5 – especially
in light of the fact that it’s apparently about to be eliminated, along with
most of the historical zoning regimes of Douglas County. Some portions of this zoning classification
may be appropriate for some of the area of development in question. I won’t dispute that. What I don’t like about the development proposal,
as it stands, it that it will result in the block-busting of much of the Old
East Lawrence district which surrounds our north end – with absolutely nothing
provided in exchange, for the neighborhood, besides noise and traffic, and a
serious long-term threat to the stability of our racially and economically
mixed district, which forms part of the core of one of the most historic urban
sites in America west of the Mississippi River.
As a thirty-two year resident and property owner of East Lawrence
– I personally will not stand by and watch, as a neighborhood which I and so
many others have worked so hard, for so long, to rebuild and protect. This development proposal – especially the unconscionably
dense residential and commercial proposals for the west side of the 800-block
of Pennsylvania Street – cannot and will not be allowed to demean and defame a
residential character which has lived in relative harmony with this industrial
district for most all of our community’s storied history.
The site is surrounded on two sides by residential uses and zoning
– some of which is single family – or RS-2.
The remainder, west of this block, should have been rezoned single
family in the early 80s – to protect its historic housing stock. It wasn’t.
But it is zoned RM-2, I believe, or duplex, per buildable city lot –
which I think is the maximum density which the neighborhood should allow on the
west side of the 800-block – with out a stiff legal and political struggle to
halt the proposed residential development.
I feel that the neighborhood has tremendous moral and ethical
grounds upon which to make such a stand on this issue Although it’s partly water under the bridge,
it being important to always be looking ahead rather than behind – the lots in
question on Pennsylvania Street were largely seized by the City of Lawrence in
1974, with eminent domain, for the
ill-conceived and ill-fated Haskell Loop – otherwise viewed as
Lawrence’s first real experiment with ‘Negro Removal.’ More than a dozen property owners and
residents, mostly fixed-income aging and elderly Mexican American women – were
handed a pittance for their properties – and evicted – for a roadway which
thankfully was never built. What was
leveled was practically the last vestige of Lawrence’s historic East Bottoms
district – which harbored a number of escaped Slaves and Freedmen, in what was
one of the few districts where men of Color could successfully buy property –
particularly as the years of Jim Crow, towards the latter portion of the 19th
century, wore on. In an era when our
city has finally reawakened to the discordant notes of a painful heritage of
national civil strife – with an oncoming new National Heritage Area, being
developed by the Lawrence Chamber – this is not the time to bury and degrade
that history – and the historic character of an important portion of Lawrence,
which is all we have left with which to commemorate that history.
It being said that I appreciate the fact that Harris Construction
is itself seeking to list some of the historic structures in the district, near
the residential blocks of East Lawrence -- I fear that this tact is being taken
as a wise financial measure, in potential tax savings -- rather than for any
real appreciation for the cultural history which historic designations are intended
to draw attention to and protect.
In my view, the proposed uses for the west side of the 800-block
of Pennsylvania, in the current Harris Construction sketches, are simply too
dense to be passed off as a ‘buffer’ between the old neighborhood, and the new
‘live, eat, work, play’ project which otherwise, on its face, could be
considered a cleaver and visionary reuse of a completely underutilized and
under-appreciated portion of Lawrence’s original town-site. This half block, so developed, could not be considered
by any professional planner as a ‘buffer,’ unless some definition unknown to
Webster's, on the word’s behalf, were to be substituted in its place. Again – I believe that there is absolutely no
reasonable case to be made for creating any more than up to twenty-four living
units on the west side of the 800-block of Pennsylvania Street – and no case to
be made at all for a vortex of commercial zoning and activity at the south end
of this block, sixty feet across the street from the beginning of the
single-family zoning district of historic Old East Lawrence.
In addition to my expression and concern for this issue – I
challenge our planning establishment in
As residents of Old East Lawrence, being of sound minds, if
moderate means – we do not want to see our neighborhood harmed or threatened –
without just compensation of some kind – at our own expense, and the expense of
other taxpayers of Lawrence and Douglas County.
Sincerely,
Mark Kaplan