Officials are looking at southeast Lawrence as the next expansion line in the city.
City Manager Mike Wildgen said Tuesday that land along a 1-mile stretch of O'Connell Road, between 23rd and 31st streets, must be annexed so the city can borrow money to pay for improvements to the road.
"We'll need to annex it," Wildgen told the Lawrence City Commission. "Right now, I don't know that any of the road is in the city."
"Half of it," City Engineer Terese Gorman said.
"Not as much as we need to get the job done," Wildgen said.
During the fall, the city annexed more than 700 acres along Sixth Street so that it could borrow money to finance its $2.5 million share of the mostly state-funded project to widen the thoroughfare.
A similar situation exists on O'Connell Road. The Kansas Department of Transportation is prepared to pay 80 percent of the $2.6 million needed to improve the road, but the city must issue bonds to pay the remaining share. State law only allows the city to go into debt for projects within city limits.
Officials said Lawrence will benefit from improvements to O'Connell. Asst. City Manager Dave Corliss said the road has become a "de facto collector street" for city traffic although it lacks collector street amenities like sidewalks and curbs.
But Wildgen warned Lawrence may face opposition to annexation tougher than what existed along Sixth Street, where developers owned much of the land and expected to be brought into the city. Property owners along O'Connell, he said, may not have those expectations or the desire to pay city taxes.
"It'll be a challenge," he said.
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