December 9, 2008
The Board of Commissioners of the City of Lawrence met in regular session at 6:35 p.m., in the City Commission Chambers in City Hall with Mayor Dever presiding and members Amyx, Chestnut, Hack, and Highberger present.
Consider approving Comprehensive Plan Amendment, CPA-2008-9, amending Horizon 2020, Chapter 14 Specific Plans, to add a reference to and incorporate the K-10 & Farmer’s Turnpike Plan and consider adopting on first reading, joint City Ordinance No. 8358/County Resolution No. ____, amending Horizon 2020, Chapter 14 Specific Plans by approving and incorporating by reference, CPA-2008-9.
Scott McCullough, Planning and Development Services Director, introduced the item. He said last week the City Commission received a presentation on a sector plan entitled K-10 and Farmer’s Turnpike Plan. Because they received that presentation from staff and received public comment, he was not going to re-present that information. He recapped that there was a fairly extensive public process that included four Planning Commission meetings, a large public meeting, three workshops and a large stakeholder list to receive input on the plan. The plan they presented was the option the Planning Commission recommended to the City Commission and the option to the sector plan and map that the staff presented toward the Planning Commission. Staff provided a memo in the packet that addressed several of the questions staff understood that were up at last week’s meeting.
Commissioner Amyx asked McCullough why at the time the request was made for the sector plan there was not consider to extend the west of K-10 area study.
McCullough said there was a particular Planning Commission mid month meeting where they were updating them on their efforts on the long range planning they did in Planning and Development Services. Staff took direction from the Planning Commission at that time that if they were going to initiate and do planning in the area, they would do the entire corridor of Farmer’s Turnpike and I-70 and not the extension of one of the plans they were working on at that time.
Commissioner Amyx asked what options they had under consideration and what all it took to do what.
McCullough said they had the opportunity to adopt the Planning Commission’s recommendation or revise the Planning Commission’s recommendation. Depending on the scope of those revisions, they needed to make a determination of whether it needed to be returned to the Planning Commission for reconsideration on their part. They could revise with a super majority vote different than what the Planning Commission recommended or they could defer for further discussion and debate.
Vice Mayor Chestnut called for public comment. He said that since there was pending litigation, they would not be able to comment on some issues. They were trying to focus on the land use map and the annexation issue was not something they would be discussing.
Lynn Ward, area resident, said the land across from her was the area between I-70 and Farmer’s Turnpike. It was slated to be industrial, but was unsuitable for industrial as per the slope recommendations of the ECO2 Commission. ECO2 recommended industrial tracts be located on land that had a slope between 0 – 3% and 25% of that land between I-70 and Farmer’s Turnpike had slopes between 15 – 40%. She said she did not like being at the City Commission meetings and her husband could not come to the meetings because he had to get up early to go to work. She said the reason they had not been to all the meetings was not because they did not care. She said what she did not like about the sector plan was that she and her family lost control of the options of what they could do with their farm. If they needed to sell 10 acres, who was going to buy it from them because no one would want to build a home there because of the future zoning so they would be forced to sell a huge chunk of their farm or all of it. With the sector zoning plan, the City Commission was in control of her and her family’s future and their farm. She said they lived outside the City and the City Commissioners did not represent them. They were choosing their future and she did not think that was right. She asked the City Commission to vote no to the sector plan.
Dave Ross, Scenic Riverway Community Association, thanked the City Commission for previously deferring this item until tonight. They had quite a few people present but a few people called and said they would not be able to make it because of the weather. They indicated they wrote to the City Commission. He said at the July Planning Commission meeting, the neighbors presented some ideas as to how industrial areas had been incorporated into and still maintained the integrity of agricultural areas in many other parts of the country and Canada. As a result, the meeting minutes reflected that they should work to increase the office and industrial research areas, that book ending these areas was a desirable option, that they should work to preserve the view from I-70 and could be creative beyond the standard set of tools that were presently available. He said with those things in mind, the neighbors went to work with staff in an effort to try and move this forward. They began with the premise that was raised by Jim Haines about the first informational meeting, that about 75 people attended, when they first saw the map staff initially prepared. Staff was not considering the fact that this was presently an agricultural residential area outside the City limits and that he felt that staff should recognize that and start from that point. They also understood there was a need for more industrial and office research space to provide future employment opportunities for the City and the County. They believed that this plan needed to fit into the Northwest Plan which was a living document to this date. He said this plan was referenced even recently by the Planning staff on projects that have occurred on the southern end of that. In general, the first sentence of the planning goal of the Northwest Plan was that sections 21 and 22 were to be left rural in character. They also knew there was a large piece of property that had already been annexed and rezoned into the area and they incorporated that into their thinking. They were informed by staff that the land to the west and south of this piece that was annexed was basically a “sacred cow” and that staff’s recommendation for this acreage was not subject for review. They also looked at the K-10 and Farmer’s Turnpike Draft, which stated that the plan should fit like a puzzle into the larger context of the surrounding street, utility and land use network of the entire community and that logical connections between the planning area and adjacent neighborhoods were a key factor in the development of the plan. Finally, they remembered that Commissioners Amyx and Chestnut voted only in favor of the annexation and the subsequent rezoning based upon the fact that no infrastructure would be promised or provided at any cost to the City. With those things in mind, they have voiced their ideas, but for other reasons they were informed by staff that despite the interest of the Planning Commission in looking at new an innovative ideas, that staff had been instructed to only use planning tools from the past. He personally felt that Scott and Michelle did an excellent job in trying to understand what the neighbors wanted, but felt like they were hamstrung by the instructions and could only work in the confines they were given. As a result of the restrictions and input by the neighbors, staff created the map known as Option 1. He said the planning staff never gave them instructions other than to plan for industrial. He said at the last meeting of the group, staff incorporated the neighbors’ ideas into another map known as Option 2. He felt that it flowed better. They created a map to show how option 2 floated into the existing area. They felt it fit more like a puzzle like the draft of the Farmer’s Turnpike required. However, because the City housing codes, the center part was shown as low density residential as one house per acre. The density did not support the infrastructure being run down the turnpike and was never their intention for infrastructure to be there. Their instruction from the Planning Commission was to plan industrial and nothing was said of residential. The rezoning was passed with no promise or provision of City services. He showed a map that better represented the concerns of the homeowners. It offered 704 acres of industrial and office research as compared to 671 shown by the City map. The plan also allowed for much quicker and less expensive implementation of the plan by using the infrastructure that was already available at the eastern end. It also operated under the expectation that the utilities on the western end would flow naturally from the south, up K-10 from the new water tower, as the area developed. Last Tuesday they saw the discussion of the west of K-10 plan and how long time homeowners were forced from their homes because of inappropriate planning. He spoke with one of the neighbors and she spoke of 35 years of broken promises, as an example the boat yard across from the bypass of her house, when that was rezoned the neighbors were promised it would not be anything but a gravel yard. At that meeting, both Commissioners Highberger and Chestnut agreed and said it was not the City Commission’s responsibility to maximize the return for property owners. The neighbors felt like they had done the due diligence and followed the instructions of the Planning Commission. They tried to balance the needs of the neighbors, many of whom had been out there for over 50 years, with the needs of the community to provide employment opportunities in the future. They acknowledged the annexation and rezoning of a large parcel of land owned by a developer in their area. They did not feel it was their responsibility to reward the greed of a speculator as he sought to add additional profit centers beyond that parcel to his portfolio. There were 125 homes in the area with more than 75 people participating, but it appeared their concerns have not been reflected at all and only the developers’ requests have any influence in this process. He said on October 27, 1986, developers Jacobs, Consey, and Jacobs and Town Center Corporation, Venture Corporation, arrogantly presented the City with a mall proposal to cover a downtown footprint from Kentucky to New Hampshire and 6th Street to 7th Street. This was a developer of record who had threatened to build the 1970 Cornfield Mall. The audacity of the take it or leave it plan hit a nerve with the community. He said imagine no Liberty Hall, no Free State Brewery or 600 block of Massachusetts Street. Imagine the back side of a stacked parking garage facing their train park. Worst of all, JVJ and TC’s agents, felt their mall deserved to own the heart of downtown. Lawrence was the largest city in America without a mall and made it sound like it was a serious liability. Here they were 22 years later with the same developer and similar situation. The commissioners at the time saw through the smoke screen and now they point to their downtown with pride as the envy of every city in the State of Kansas, yet it could have looked a whole lot different. Last week Commissioner Amyx asked if this was the way they wanted this to look in the future as they passed the baton, and he thought that applied again tonight.
Marguerite Ermeling, area resident, said she made a copy of the three maps and in the three maps they had the option that the staff members brought forward. They were in confinement on what they would accept from the neighbors to apply to a map and interpreted within their control and guidelines what that option 2 map should be. Option 2 was not really their map but the map they were presenting. She said she wanted to go in depth on the history of how they got started on this. She wanted to preface that by saying that as a neighborhood they felt they have worked very hard at working at alternative efforts to embrace the things that have been demonstrated to them and spoken to them by the various commissions. She said that one and primary issue in response to the needs of the community as defined by Beth Johnson by the Chamber of Commerce, by the commissions and directions themselves, the emphasis was to be placed on some industrial. When they first brought their proposal to the Planning Commission, there were a number of things brought forward by Beth Johnson as creative ideas. At the time they presented it and went through the possibilities that would come forward if they were looking long range, they brought ideas that were not selected but places to begin to think about creative options in the area. She said it was an effort to leave a bulk majority of the area un-evolved. She said Johnson brought forward pictures on how they could evolve industry in the presence of rural space and do it effectively and use the surrounding lands as some of the buffers. In her text, she presented some ideas such as rural conservation and industrial zoning district. There was also MR zoning intended to provide large sites having frontage for interchange sites where urban development was not anticipated to occur in the foreseeable future. She said the MR zoning accommodated industrial development of the land in an intense nature on a limited service basis. There was another one called resource conservation zoning districts that also allowed industrial. She said these were zonings that existed now and elsewhere in the country.
She said the neighbors did not begin this process with any knowledge or direction they understood until going to the sector plan that they were supposed to urbanize the whole space in the first place. There was a question to why they had all the space in there because it was not part of what commissions were talking to the neighbors about; they wanted industrial at the interchange. As they progressed through their areas, there was some direction in the context of the Northwest Plan and in that plan there were specifically two sites in the general area, the land use area. Their plan was that sections 20 and 21 were to remain rural in character during the life of the plan or until endorsed. As far as she knew, short of some references that did not support Map 1 in the alternative northwest development area of the code, it was still to be low to very low density. It directed itself to Horizon 2020 and supported there. She said the last one dealt with number four. Sections 20 and 21 should continue to be rural in character and residential uses should be very low density according to guidelines in Horizon 2020. She said when they started out their work, it was with no knowledge that they could not begin this from finding industrial land. As was mentioned last week, they found industrial land and looked at it a number of different ways and tried to look at it a number of different ways to look at infrastructure in the area reasonably. One was that there was infrastructure nearby on the east side. She said the sizes were useable and functional in some fashion towards and industrial base adjacent to the industrial area. They were well supported peripherally with housing that already existed there. She said that area seemed most logical to come up through along K-10 and with the passage of the west plan that made more sense, it looked like they would fit and met the purpose of what was defined in the K-10/I-70 plan where the purpose was to make it look like everything fit.
She said one of the things the neighbors looked at was to ask themselves why they were going through all the density when the urban growth area that already existed from 5 years ago was massive. There have been no public funds expended to her knowledge, although there was a holding pattern on the completion of a water treatment plant south of Wakarusa. That was a massive area that was decided to bring into the community because it had advantages out there and potential of gravity feed to the sewer plant. She said that had not taken root but was not completely sector planned out there and they have not completely sector planned as far west of the UGA. There was a lot of space in there and had farmland that was potential for the community. They had the Southeast Area Plan and industrial at K-10. They decided that industrial was not to be centered in one spot in the community and needed to be in multifocal areas in the community, which included the south area because there was a lot to be achieved out there. When the neighbors came to this, they thought there was a reason to retain the ruralness out there and fit the low density that was coming from the Northwest Sector Plan and Sections 20 and 21. She thought it was premature to pursue this plan at this time or suggested by staff to go with option 1. She did not agree with that and collected 105 signatures of people who lived in the area and in the perimeter of the area who did not agree to plan 1. She said there were a lot of people who felt that way and were property owners who were in the area. She asked the City Commission to reconsider the size and footprint they were looking at in this sector plan and send it back with a different direction to consider and move forward to the things they have stated before they thought were necessary, leave the rest of it alone at the time because it did not need to be in the project and did not require the extension of infrastructure along Farmer’s Turnpike. They could get infrastructure in the places they needed it and way more cost effective than dragging it from one side to another, up and along Farmer’s Turnpike. She asked the City Commission to take note that it was not great long term planning that they have done to date. She would like the footprint of the sector plan to be reduced and be more manageable.
Ron Schneider, attorney for the neighborhood Scenic Riverway Community Association, thanked Mayor Dever for deferring this item until this evening. He said he contacted the Mayor before the last meeting and the mayor told him he would try to advise an extension. He said as some of his clients have stated, more people would be here but for the weather and other factors. He addressed some concerns about procedure and notice requirements with staff counsel before this hearing or meeting. There were some serious questions about whether or not notice had been given as required under K.S.A. 12-743. The notice was required when they had a comprehensive plan change or addition. Written notice had to go to the township trustee if it was outside the City limits and the County had to give notice of such activity to the township trustee and also to a City within 3 miles of the area of the land if it was not incorporated. He was advised by the city counsel that they believed they had done that, but it was his understanding that confirmation of that in paper was not here and not readily available. He believed they should not take action until they 100% confirm that was in fact the case. He learned just today of the lack of notice to the township trustee after talking with his clients he personally contacted the township trustee and advised that he never received notice. He said under the statute, it was mandatory that written notice be given as well as standard publication notice.
He said there were questions about the sector plan and first and foremost was why now and why this sector plan was even being considered. He asked what the urgency was and what the purpose was of the sector plan. He asked why they were considering it under the budgetary restraints they have recognized over the past number of months after all the considerations. Many people wanted to know what was going on and he could not answer that logically except for a simple response. There was one land owner and one land developer who wanted to enlarge their potential development. In doing so and reviewing this, he believed they needed to look at Horizon 2020. When they read the introduction to the master plan, on the first page it stated that specifically the City and County used the comprehensive plan to evaluate development proposals to coordinate development at the fringes of the counties and cities to form a foundation for a specific area plan and project future service and facility needs and to meet the requirements for federal and state programs. The comprehensive plan was used most often as a tool to assist the decision makers and evaluating the appropriateness of land development proposals. The comprehensive plan allowed the decision makers to look at the entire community and the effects of land use decisions on the community as a whole to determine whether individual proposals were consistent with the overall goals of the community. He said repeatedly, overall goals of the community, not one person, but the community. As a summary, there was a statement in Horizon 2020, which said early in the planning process the Horizon 2020 steering committee adopted the following mission statement, “Horizon 2020 is the citizen driven process of creating a plan to provide policy and strategic direction to guide Lawrence/Douglas County to the year 2020.” He said keeping that in mind he directed them to look at Chapter 14. Chapter 14 was specifically sector plan. A sector plan covered one or more sections of land and uses geographic and demographic information to develop a detailed land use vision for future development or redevelopment of the study area. In the hierarchy of plans, a sector or area plan was the third tier. Based on the size of the area being studied, one or more sections of land could be between 18 – 24 months to develop. Commissioners had the largest sector plan ever considered by the City, which was about 4,000 acres. It was brought in at a speed of 6 – 7 months, but the comprehensive plan indicated for their reference 18 – 24 months. He said they looked at that with skepticism and cynicism, and based upon that was to show what the comprehensive plan envisioned. It was not a quick process. He asked the City Commission to look at all the purposes and reasons and confirm what, if any, applied to this particular process. The one thing that consistently applied, in his opinion, was that the City Commission had one person emphasizing the desire for the City Commission to proceed at break neck speed so they could do development. He had not heard an outcry of the people who have and was in the typical process the key stakeholders, the people who live in the sector plan, coming to the City Commission and asking for a sector plan. The irony was that the City Commissioners were elected by city residents but the individuals in the area could not vote for the city commission, did not vote for the city commission, and were county residents. They would be able to express their concerns in a timely manner to the County Commission, but right now they were before the City Commission. The City Commission had the power to make great influence on their life and direct how development was to proceed. His clients want them to slow it down and do what the master comprehensive plan envisioned. The comprehensive plan was a community wide effort. The City Commission voted for this, adopted it, and previous City Commissions have respected it. When they took action as a City Commission, he assumed they expected subsequent City Commissioners to either respect their decision and follow the laws or to change it, revoke it or amend it. This comprehensive plan, especially on the section of the sector plan, Chapter 14, was not being followed in his opinion. He did not think the speed of this, the content of the study, the evaluation of geographic and demographic information, the flood plain, and the hierarchy of the plans and studies, the watershed or sub base of plans have not received the type of recognition and discussion that it required. He saw no reference to this anywhere in the sector plan and knew no point of discussion in the process. He said the northwest area plan should control or have a great deal of influence. Option 1 to the contrary ignored the area proposed land use on the Northwest Plan and included residential and also residential office. Across from the interstate was residential and other use, which appeared to be medium density residential. He said they should compare that again to the Northwest Area Plan uses. It was rural residential. He believed some debate and explanation was required. It was only appropriate to look at what had been considered acceptable and proposed by many stakeholders in the area to follow that plan. It was very low density residential area and the area calling for office research was inconsistent with the plan he presented.
He said his clients have shared with the City Commission their efforts to participate in good faith, present their opinions, yet after all was said and done, it appeared that their recommendations as it came to the final map presented received very little serious consideration or at least not included in the presentation of plan one. They were at the beginning stage of an appropriate process and that process needed to continue as contemplated by the previous commissioners and Horizon 2020. They would get there and the community would participate and everyone would be proud of what they had. He asked why this had to move now and if they talked to anyone in planning, they would confirm that it had never moved this fast before. This was a community process that contemplated it could take 18 – 24 months and suggested that it not be something done quickly and there should be further discussions from stakeholders and community members alike on the largest sector plan ever considered by the City.
Jim Haines, area resident, said he supported the comments from the previous speakers. He said his farm had been continuously farmed since the 1870s and he and the previous owners have gone to great lengths to preserve that property. If they looked at nearly any historically oriented map of Douglas County, they would see their house referred to as the Goral House, who were the people who started the farm in the 1870s. He said he did not have anything to add to the substance of what the other speakers had said. The alternative plan made a lot of sense and he participated in most of the meetings that have been referred to earlier and was disappointed with the outcome which at the beginning they were led to believe they would take into account the concerns of the people who lived in the area. As far as he knew, there was only one person who had recently moved to the area who was in favor of what was in front of the City Commission tonight. Everyone else who lived out there was opposed to it.
Jane Eldredge, Barber Emerson, representing landowners in support of the sector plan, said she would not repeat the presentation she gave last week, but would answer any questions about that. She said the Planning staff did an outstanding job and knew they would recall early on and approximately a year ago there was a Planning Commission study session at which time the staff talked about a number of sector plans that needed to be done essentially ringing the City of Lawrence. This sector plan was one of the sector plans identified to be done. There had been quite a bit of discussion about planning in the City of Lawrence and how long it took and how many meetings back and forth it took. They had some outstanding examples like the Southeast Area Plan, which took four or seven years. At the time this sector plan was initiated, the Planning Commission adopted the direction to the staff with the area plan and adopted a timeline. The timeline sat out and adopted by the Planning Commission and forwarded to the City Commission in the minutes was a five month process for this sector plan. It set out a public meeting to review the draft, a Planning Commission meeting, and a City Commission meeting scheduled for July 15th with the County Commission the next evening on July 16th. She said that did not happen. The process became much larger, there were many more meetings, and this was on the Planning Commission agenda five different times. The stakeholder meetings were not part of the original timeline, but added and staff worked hard to get the input from everyone. Some of the people she represented also presented maps to the staff and requested a good deal more industrial. Staff did look at the topography, the demographics, the slope and other kinds of considerations like the flood plan that fit into the west of K-10 plan and the Northwest Plan. All of those things were studied. She appreciated Mr. Haines candor and not liking the output. When they started a process, they did not always know if they would like the output. Her clients were not thrilled with the output, but it was a fair output and was the best thing they could ask of a public process and that there be a fair hearing. The hearings have been full and fair throughout this and staff had been diligent in researching the questions and concerns that were presented to them. Because this area was primarily in the unincorporated area, the County would need to decide on it as well. Those who felt unrepresented by the City Commission she hoped would feel represented by the County should they have the opportunity to take it to the county. She thought it was important to bring things to a close and right now they doubled the amount of time that had been anticipated and planned for in going through the process and more than tripled the number of meetings.
Commissioner Amyx asked if the County Commission took this item up yesterday.
Eldredge said she was told that they did. She was not there and did not know it was going to be on the agenda.
JoAnn Farb said she heard a little bit of what the last speaker just said and wanted to respond to a couple of things. One of the assertions was that this process was fair. She said as a land owner who just in the last few years based on information that was conveyed to her through the County, bought land in the area and built a home and invested so much of their time and life energy in this based upon what they understood were the future plans, now to see it as possibly radically changed, this process was not fair at all. She also wanted to remind everyone that Ms. Eldredge, who represented some developers in this whole process, spoke to the committee back when they were looking at the island annexation rezoning of 155 acres and said that this would not take any City services for water, land, and they would not be requiring anything of the city and just wanted to island annex and rezone it for industrial. What they were seeing now was what that process led to and what they were going to see was that the City was going to pay for the infrastructure to develop her applicants’ land. It felt like there was no where in this process that the cost to the tax payers of putting that infrastructure in and how that was going to completely overturn the long range plans to build a wastewater treatment plant to the north and east, which was going to save money by not having to put in a pump station because that was the geographically ideal spot to do it. They could lose that because when funds got committed to provide the infrastructure to completely rewrite Horizon 2020 and now send development out to the south, it seemed unfair and unwise in terms of how they do their planning and how they spent taxpayers’ dollars. She said that was not being addressed here and thought it was wrong with what was going on.
Beth Johnson, Vice President of Economic Development Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, said in the Horizon 2020 comprehensive plan, there was a goal to recruit, create, expand and retain 20,000 jobs in their community by 2020. That was a goal, as a community, they stated and should be planning for. Twenty two years ago, East Hills Business Park was brought into their community. It was an island annexation at that time and growth area that had not been thought of because they were at a point they were at now where they were out of industrial land. During those last 22 years, they should have been planning for those next industrial areas. Times were good, population was booming, there were things going on that led them down a different path to take care of different services and needs. They were at the point today where they were facing zero opportunities to recruit new businesses and expand those they had. She said what they were doing here tonight was not going to fix the problem. What they were talking about with the sector plan was planning the future. It did not mean if the City Commission approved it and the County ultimately approved the plan, it did not mean it went into existence tomorrow and did not mean they put out for sale signs immediately or that she got to start marketing the property immediately. All it meant was what they were doing was taking a step forward to plan for the future for where they wanted their job growth, where they wanted their residents to live and where they wanted the community to look. What they dealt with in economic development was location. The location of I-70 was one thing the community should be proud of. It was an asset that a lot of other communities did not have and an asset they could do other things to take advantage of. She showed a map that showed the interconnecting that led to I-70, which from a trucking access was tremendous. Along Farmer’s Turnpike, they had Lakeview where a lot of industrial was right now in the area. In order for those industrial clients to get to I-70, they had to turn a corner, a four way stop, a stop light, and then entrance to I-70. Along Farmer’s Turnpike, they did more industrial zoning towards the west edge, they had immediate access. Trucking companies needed that immediate access and when they had to go further, it added to the cost. It made their site more difficult to consider if there was a site that provided better access. Another thing they worried about was utilities and power was a huge utility. The map showed the access point for power lines and how it went above the Farmer’s Turnpike area and to an area that would be considered industrial in option 1. She said there was a question last week that Commissioner Chestnut brought up regarding the sliver of land between Farmer’s Turnpike and I-70. She enlarged the map to show how large that sliver was. They superimposed some of the East Hills properties on that, which included AMARR Garage Doors, PROSOCO, Vangent and the Spec. building. Out of those four buildings, they could fit those in the property. There would be easements and access, but they could fit those four companies in that sliver of property between I-70 and K-10. She said another bit of information that came up last week was how it looked. If they put industrial along I-70, how would it look to a passerby. To her, it looked great and showed jobs. It showed opportunities in the community that would be available to new residents and residents they had now. She looked at South Lake Industrial Park in Lenexa. South Lake had approximately 5,000 employees, zoned B1 and B2, and had some great looking buildings you could see from I-35. One of them was Deluxe Corporation that employed 340 people. She showed the aerial view of South Lake. She showed a picture of a company called Quest Diagnostics that was at the intersection of I-35 and I-435. She showed another industrial area at K-10 off of I-435 and showed a picture of Lenexa Commerce Center which had about 1,500 employees and zoned mostly B1 and B2. There was a whole area they could see that was all residential. B1 and B2 was the most intense zoning in Lenexa, but in the plan called for industrial. At some point in the future they would be in front of the City Commission asking for an IG, IL, or IBP. They were planning for the future which she hoped included areas of industrial as well as office and research that allowed them to bring jobs to the community. I-70 was a tremendous asset they needed to take advantage of.
Tom Allen, area resident, said when he was listening to what everyone was talking about earlier and what he heard about in previous meetings, the main interest in all of this was industrial and that they needed more industrial. He said their plan offered more industrial to the City than Option 1 did. There was industrial on the east end that was immediately connected to the infrastructure that was needed. The west end was down the road and personally thought the City would have to pay for it in the future when it was developed. The eastern end was ready to go and plenty of room for more industrial. He said he read the Lawrence Journal World and the other thing that stood out in his mind was the City was broke and did not have any money. He asked why they would want a plan that was looking at housing in the industrial areas. He said housing was a drain on City finances and did not make money but cost money. The housing was not in the original plan and should leave it blank. If they were looking towards the future, farmland was looking pretty good and would offer quite a bit of space. He said they should see what would be developed in the farmland.
Louis Copt, area resident, said he wanted to add his voice to the opposition of the plan. He asked the City Commission sit back and think about this. For every person that was here speaking against this tonight, there were at least 10 more families at home tonight because they could not make it here. They were unable in the township to vote for or against the City Commission, so their fate was in their hands and asked the Commission to be mindful and not rush this.
Commissioner Amyx asked about the notification issues brought up by counsel for the neighborhood association.
McCullough said they felt like they had records that supported proper notice and would confirm that tomorrow when they got back to their files and office. The intent of the statute was to provide notice to the township and any city within three miles of the plan. They believed they had done that three separate times.
Mayor Dever asked staff to comment on the length of time that the west of K-10 took to develop versus the plan that was before them.
McCullough said according to Dan’s presentation, it was just about the same time, perhaps a little bit after they initiated this. This had become a parallel time frame in many ways. It was initiated at the beginning of this year and they took action on it this week.
Mayor Dever asked why staff would indicate this was rushed or fast tracked when there was another plan like this that no one seemed to have any issues with the timeline on.
McCullough said he did not know if that was a quote or something pulled from a report or what. The public timeline had been shared with the City Commission and Planning Commission as they were beginning this process they were anticipating adoption this summer, but were happy to slow the process down when they were approached by the community representatives to do that and look at other options.
Commissioner Highberger said he acknowledged the need for industrial land. He said his issues were with process and timing. He said it might be good to review the process. The way he understood the whole issue began with a landowner in the county outside the City’s urban growth area was not able to get the zoning he wanted from the County and came to the City. The City annexed and rezoned, which they did without a sector plan which they were not supposed to do, so a sector plan was initiated. Now they were planning for hundreds of acres outside the urban growth area. He said the staff work indicated that there may be people on the Planning Commission who thought the urban growth area needed to be revisited. If that was the case, then they were doing it in the wrong order. They needed to look at the urban growth area and if that needed to be expanded. One reason it was not expanded to the area was because of school district boundaries. They were planning for a substantial amount of residential growth outside of USD 497 and not sure that got a lot of attention during this process. They have rural residents who expected their property to be rural outside the City’s planning horizon and now they were planning for urban density growth in the area without public discussion about whether that was their intent. He was not prepared at this point to adopt any plan that planned urban density growth outside the urban growth area. His preference would be to put this on hold, look at the urban growth area boundary and revisit it at that time.
Mayor Dever asked Corliss if it was unprecedented to review area outside the urban growth area.
Corliss said it depended on how far back they wanted to go. They had the urban growth area for around 10 years. They have not necessarily done a lot of sector plans but as far as the K-10 Plan they looked at last week, it was all within the urban growth area, along with the Southeast Area Plan. He said the precedent was that they did not have a lot of experience with a sector plan. He heard something that commissioners encouraged was they had great long range planners and exercise it and make those decisions. They should forecast to property owners what they thought future growth would look like if it came and make the planning decisions as appropriate. It could be a lengthy process and the county needed to strongly participate in this and they have not heard anything from the county.
Mayor Dever said there was good reason to see us plan for this area. He said he was surprised to see them just developing a plan west of K-10 in an area that was being developed rapidly and should be planned more in the future. He was glad they were being aggressive in their plans. He said just because the sector plan indicated that it could take up to 18 – 24 months did not mean it should and would like a city that was cognitive and decisive and interested in doing what was best for all people in the shortest period of time because it ultimately saved money, was efficient and people could move on with their lives when they knew the future. This plan was far reaching and looked towards the future and allowed them to identify potential uses of land that would be dictated by the land owners and by the zoning they sought, if and when this got into the City limits. He thought they needed to move forward with the plan and the plan that specified with the most amount of industrial land was not the best plan, but the plan that was best for the community and the best land uses was the best plan. He would like to see more options and preferred option 1 because it seemed to fulfill the needs and was recommended by staff.
Commissioner Hack said the City Manager nailed it on the head when he said the City did not have a lot of experience with sector plans. She said that was what had been troubling an awful lot of people and commissions have been criticized for a long time for not having long range plans and something in place for what the long range plans were. It was important to remember that sector plans did not put a for sale sign in the yard, annex property, provide utilities, but let people plan the future and they have not done a very good job of long range planning. The Planning Commission directed staff along with the City and County Commissions to do that and now they have done it, there were people who were not happy they have. She said that was the joy of serving the public. The Planning Commission spent a great deal of time on this and planning staff had as well. She believed it had been a public process. The City was growing in that direction and that was where they needed to have their look. She agreed with the Mayor that Option 1 was the best of the ones they have seen and the Planning Commission on a 7 – 3 vote agreed with that. There were flood plain and size issues in Option 2 that have not been addressed. In her estimation, Option 1 was the way they needed to be. I-70 connection was critical and their industrial needs were critical. Those were important for the overall community. The overall goals of the community were not to be broke and to bring their residential versus non residential in a better balance than it was now. Moving forward with this was critical.
Commissioner Amyx said he had heard from both sides now. The applicant of the annexation had stated in the past that the sector plan was too big and now this evening Ron Schneider stated this plan is too big. He said there were a couple of things that stood out in his mind. This started because they considered an island annexation for industrial property and they all agreed the need for industrial property located in various places throughout the community was going to be important for job creation in Lawrence, Kansas for years to come. Where they were in this plan right now was the area between the two industrial areas and that was it and whether or not they were going to take the recommendation of the Planning Commission and planning staff on what they saw as being the future. He said one thing he saw on all the plans was that they were all subject to change at any time and there were requests that happened all the time on what they were going to look like. He noticed in the joint resolution that the ordinance they had before them, everything was referenced on all the specific plans from the Planning Commission.
He asked if it was to just show the entire work that had been done throughout this process and have reference on all that information.
McCullough said in Chapter 14 specific plans, those were the adopted plans they used to guide development.
Commissioner Amyx said he looked at this and the plan that was presented to them by the people in the rural area, he understood the need to not want to have that area change right now. He looked at this from the standpoint that there was a lot of industrial on either end now.
He asked if the City Commission had the ability to make any change in that area from the Planning Commission’s recommendation without sending it back.
McCullough said if it was a pretty large area they would probably need to send it back to the Planning Commission.
Corliss said if you change the map you should send it back to the Planning Commission unless you have four votes.
Vice Mayor Chestnut said he appreciated Mr. Schneider’s comments about Horizon 2020 and he went back to some of that original document. The way the UGA was formed, he believed it went up to the county line, up the river and out to the airport. In their most recent consideration of Chapter 7 and considering Class 1 and 2 soils, there was some serious question as to whether a lot of that land would get developed under new criteria. To some extent they may or may not have eliminated a fair portion of the UGA from possible development.
Secondly, he thought it was appropriate to understand sector plans. He understood the school district and there were a lot of comments about the City Commission being in control. The City had so many appointments to the Planning Commission, the County had so many appointments to th4e Planning Commission, and it was a balance put together as a joint committee for a long time and served well. The whole idea of trying to work together, not that they were trying to control the destiny outside the borders of the City, but work together to get the best comprehensive plan they could get, taking into consideration this body before he and Mayor Dever were present, they were considering rural neighborhood development and was understanding as when those neighbors came into the City, and how that integrated. He thought that was important to consider and was not about trying to gain control of people’s rights.
Horizon 2020 talked about 24/40 as an industrial development 12 years ago. There have been statements about different land uses for a very long time for parts all the way outside the unincorporated county. He did not think the sector plans were doing anything different than the comprehensive plan was trying to do or achieve over the last 10 – 15 years which was understand how this was going to be done in some measured fashion. The other thing that was startling about that document was about what the estimation the population could be in the City of Lawrence. The estimation on the low side in 2030 was 110,000, in the medium was 125,000 and the high was 150,000. He did not know how relevant those numbers might or might not be, but when he came back to this particular sector, the biggest problem he had with the very low density was all of the sudden they were carving out a very big portion that if it did come into the city, it would create sprawl. He said when they talked about the bookend of industrial development, he thought that had some credence but the big swath in the middle was challenging for him because it basically declared the fact that they were going to little density areas if it came out into the City. They may be talking 40 years from now. Their population grew 443% over the 50 years from 1950 – 2000. The fact was that regardless of where they set the UGA boundaries, the City was very likely from historical standpoints to be impacting these areas and was responsible to talk about how they planned for those things. There were elements of both plans he liked and elements of both plans he did not like. He wanted to give credence to the process and the fact was he spent some time talking to a number of people about this but overall it was in his estimation that Option 1 represented the best planning they had given all the different stakeholders involved. He thought it was going to be a very long term plan and he did not see a lot of what was happening north of Farmer’s Turnpike happening except for the industrial to the west and east happening any time soon. They had to give some credence to some density there because if their population was anywhere close to those numbers Horizon 2020 talked about, it made sense to have that low of density in that big of an area.
Commissioner Amyx said that people in the area had the opportunity to ask for a different recommendation from the Planning Commission. He said if their goal was the industrial on either end, that was where it was in the beginning, was it the right plan at the right time. The Planning Commission and Planning staff believed the recommendation to the City Commission believed that. He wanted everyone to know that there were options to looking at other possible uses and recommendations in that area.
He asked McCullough on the Northwest Area Plan Sections 20 and 21, they had recommendation for industrial on the north edges of those two sections. In the hierarchy of plans, how much credence did they place on the Northwest Area Plan in making a recommendation to the Planning Commission for it to remain industrial.
McCullough said the Northwest Area Plan was a unique situation. It was adopted in 1997 and when they adopted Chapter 14, specific plans, they specifically did not include the Northwest Plan as one they looked to. It was in need of an update and on a work plan to hopefully get to in 2009. Some things have changed in the area as development occurred on 6th Street to the north that had led them to include that in their work plan they previously shared with the City Commission. They looked at the Northwest Area Plan and held to some of that south of I-70. North of I-70 they felt like they had an opportunity to review the concepts they created to look at the entire corridor. As 10 year old plans came up for review or they overlap their planning areas, they looked at current assumptions, current data and current information from the Planning Commission and governing body to produce their plans. In the beginning parts of the plan, they reference the Northwest Area Plan. They were the same kind of planning tool, but felt like it was an opportunity to update some of the areas of the northwest area plan. Their plan was to go back in, take the remaining areas that were not developed or covered by this sector plan, and look at those specific properties in the future.
Commissioner Highberger said he agreed with the Vice Mayor that they needed to plan for the future and when they planned they needed to plan for urban density. He said his understanding was that even at suburban density growth, it was his understanding that there was enough land in the urban growth area, even at the high end projections, to accommodate their growth for 20 years. He said that was why it raised his eyebrows a little and if they adopted the SmartCode that would extend the life even farther. He said it made him wonder why they were planning for urban density growth outside the urban growth area without going through some formal process of changing the lines.
Moved by Hack, seconded by Dever, to approve Comprehensive Plan Amendment, CPA-2008-9, amending Horizon 2020, Chapter 14 Specific Plans, to add a reference to and incorporate the K-10 & Farmer’s Turnpike Plan and consider adopting on first reading, joint City Ordinance No. 8358/County Resolution No. ____, amending Horizon 2020, Chapter 14 Specific Plans by approving and incorporating by reference, CPA-2008-9. Motion carried 4-1 (Highberger voted no). (19)