Lawrence city commissioners will be asked to make a decision tonight on how much area around Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive should be devoted to retail.

Owners of 19 acres on the northeast corner of Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive will ask city commissioners to approve a preliminary development plan allowing a new 148,000-square-foot retail center.

Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commissioners rejected the plan at their March meeting, saying the project would push the intersection’s total retail development above the limit of 450,000 square feet as spelled out in Horizon 2020, the city’s comprehensive land-use plan.

RoxAnne Miller, an attorney representing the property owners, said she doesn’t dispute that the development is about 100,000 square feet over what Horizon 2020 deems allowable, but said she hopes commissioners will approve the project anyway because it would be a unique addition to Lawrence’s retail scene.

“We believe this is the type of project the community really wants, and everything we have ever looked at shows that it won’t overload the infrastructure or any of the other systems,” Miller said.

Miller and the project’s commercial real estate agent, Marilyn Bittenbender, are touting the development as a “Lifestyle Center,” a new trend in the retail industry that focuses on increased pedestrian access to stores along with parking lots that better blend into the design of the development.

The project, called Wakarusa Village, also will prohibit any big box type of development.

“We want to give the community every chance to say yes to this because we think it really incorporates a lot of the planning ideas that we have been talking about in this community for years,” Miller said.

Bryan Dyer, a long-range planner with the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Department, agrees the project would be a first-of-its kind for Lawrence.

“I agree that it is more of a town-center type of design, and Lawrence hasn’t seen one of those before,” Dyer said. “It’s unique in the fact that when you drive by you won’t see a sea of asphalt. And it’s the type of center that you can get in your car and drive there, but once you get there you can walk around to the different shops and enjoy yourself like you would in a downtown area.”

But Dyer said the plan clearly would violate the guidelines spelled out in Horizon 2020. There already is 400,000 square feet of commercial development built or approved for the land surrounding the intersection. This project would push the total to nearly 550,000 square feet.

“There are some real good reasons to stick to the plan because we use the land-use plan to make other plans, like utility and transportation plans for the area, and if we deviate from the land-use plan it could cause problems in other areas,” Dyer said.

City commissioners meet at 6:35 p.m. today at City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.