When Wally Emerson, Mike Fink and their west Lawrence neighbors didn’t like an apartment complex proposed for their part of town, they didn’t just get mad.

They got organized. And the Quail Run Neighborhood Assn. was born.

“We knew other neighborhoods had organized before us and that they have a stronger voice in city government,” said Fink, the association president.

They’re not the only ones getting organized in response to development plans. Spurred by plans for a Wal-Mart Supercenter at Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive, a group of neighbors who live west of Wakarusa will meet in January to consider forming their own neighborhood association.

“When I was approached, they said, ‘We don’t want things like this to happen again in our neighborhood,'” said Jeanne Newman, one of the neighbors. “‘Banding together, we can deter things like this.'”

It’s not just Lawrence’s newest neighborhoods that want the power of a collective voice. Two neighborhoods in older areas of town — Parkhill Neighborhood south of 23rd Street between Louisiana and Vermont streets, and University Heights west of the Kansas University campus — both have formed associations in the past year.

Mary Rector, vice president of the Parkhill Neighborhood, said her neighbors wanted to make sure city government didn’t forget about serving older areas of town when it came time to put in sidewalks and traffic-calming devices.

“We feel sometimes we’re treated like a stepchild,” she said. “Things come up, we’re going to be singing loud and clear like everybody else. It’s for our own protection.”

Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods President Caleb Morse said he couldn’t remember when so many neighborhoods had organized in such a short time.

“I think people see what good comes from having organized units,” he said.

Influence

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Whatever their reasons for organizing, representatives of the new and prospective neighborhood associations sounded a common theme: They don’t expect city government will pay attention to their interests otherwise.

“The process was not working the way it should,” Emerson said of the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission’s approval earlier this year of an apartment complex at Sixth Street and Folks Road.

David Dunfield, former LAN president and now a city commissioner, said he wasn’t insulted by the neighborhoods’ distrust of the commission.

“It’s always more influential to have organized groups of people represent a position than to have a few individuals do so,” Dunfield said. “It just makes sense neighborhood groups would organize.”

Getting organized has paid off for Quail Run.

Neighborhood members who lived next to the proposed complex signed a “protest petition” against the plan, which meant the city commission would have had to muster a 4-1 supermajority vote to approve the project. Developer Doug Compton withdrew the project and has submitted a new plan for the property. The new plan is for a development that looks more like the surrounding single-family neighborhoods; the planning commission will take up the issue in February.

Compton also co-owns the property Wal-Mart wants to develop. He did not return calls seeking comment.

Staying together

Officials agreed most of the groups were formed in times of neighborhood crisis.

“The sad fact is, most associations start in reaction to a perceived threat,” Morse said. “The successful ones find a reason to stay intact beyond that.”

And at some point, the Wal-Mart issue will be resolved, as will the proposal for Sixth and Folks Road. Will Quail Run and other new associations in west Lawrence have a reason to keep going?

Emerson said he thought so. After all, his neighborhood has concerns about traffic, too, and about staying safe from crime.

“We don’t want to be an organization of one crisis,” he said. “We want to be built to address neighborhood concerns so we can have long life.”

Besides, Emerson said, Quail Run’s opposition to unwanted development has had an unintended benefit: It turned the neighbors into a neighborhood.

“It was interesting, because so many of us didn’t know each other,” he said. “So we got a chance to meet neighbors we might not have met.”