City estimates that state highway officials will pay more than $300,000 an acre for right of way to widen Sixth Street in northwestern Lawrence likely are too high, but landowners must wait until summer to learn what offers will be made.
Joe Krahn, an attorney with the Kansas Department of Transportation's Bureau of Rights of Way, said an early city estimate of roughly $3.2 million to buy fewer than 9 acres of right of way likely would be adjusted downward.
Any widening of U.S. Highway 40 from Wakarusa Drive west to the South Lawrence Trafficway will be expensive, according to city and Kansas Department of Transportation officials. A state transportation official said a city estimate of up to $300,000 per acre to purchase right of way was likely too high, but he noted that some land along the fast-growing corridor was selling for the equivalent of about $130,000 per acre. This view looks at the highway from west of the city.
"That seems a little high per acre, but the nine acres needed sounds a little bit on the light side," Krahn said. "Those estimates were prepared before the project even started design, and you can't really put much stock in any numbers that were done two or three years ago."
What is certain is that the land won't come cheap, Krahn said. The project, which stretches between Wakarusa Drive and the South Lawrence Trafficway, runs through the heart of the city's hottest new development area.
"We're not going to be buying much land out there at ag prices," Krahn said. "There's a lot of development interest out in that area, so it will be expensive."
Krahn said he was told land west of the intersection of Kansas Highway 10/U.S. Highway 40 recently sold for $27,000 an acre and that property even closer to the city limits has sold for between $2 and $3 per square foot, or the equivalent of up to about $130,000 an acre.
Krahn said he wouldn't have a good idea what the state must pay for right of way until he dispatched private appraisers sometime this summer to begin talking with landowners.
The project likely will require portions of 50 or more tracts of land. Krahn, however, said he doesn't have an exact acreage amount needed or a list of property owners his department will deal with because design of the new four-lane road hasn't been finished.
Still, Krahn said he was confident only one family would be displaced from its home as a result of the project. KDOT has already bought a house and 2.5 acres from Pam and David Chaffee at the northeast corner of Queens Road and U.S. Highway 40.
"It was very difficult to sell," David Chaffee said. "We were there almost 13 years and loved our view of Clinton Lake from atop the hill. But we saw the growth coming, and really the process with KDOT went very smooth. It was not the bad experience that you sometimes expect."
Chaffee wouldn't say what the property sold for and the state is not yet required to make the price public. But Chaffee said it was fair and allowed him and his wife to be "comfortable" in their new home in the country.
He said the price wasn't in the $300,000 range.
"We'd be a little more than comfortable if it were that," Chaffee said. "We'd probably have retired for a few years."
Krahn said he was uncertain how possible state budget cuts would affect the $17 million project, which will widen the road to four lanes and add left turn lanes at major intersections.
Krahn, though, said his department would advocate right of way purchases continue even if the project was cut from the department's construction budget.
"It would be prudent because the land isn't going to get any cheaper, and I think everyone agrees the project is going to get built someday," Krahn said.
Construction tentatively is scheduled to begin by 2004.
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