Lenexa ? DeSoto Mayor David Anderson believes a major hurdle to redeveloping the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant could be cleared before Gov. Bill Graves leaves office early next year.

Anderson on Friday told a group of business and government leaders at the K-10 Assn. quarterly membership meeting here that DeSoto city officials were working on a plan to create a redevelopment commission or authority. That commission would assume control from the federal government of the 9,065-acre site near DeSoto before Graves leaves office in the first week in January.

“I think it is possible it could still be done before Gov. Graves leaves,” Anderson said. “But he needs some group to transfer it to.”

Anderson said he had asked the city’s attorney to study what legal options the city council had for creating a redevelopment authority. That group would then be responsible for hearing requests and working with developers interested in doing commercial and residential development on parts of the decommissioned Army facility south of Kansas Highway 10.

The plan’s details, which would include who would serve on the commission and how it would conduct its business, could be ready to present to state officials within the next six weeks, Anderson said.

He also said he hoped the idea of creating a redevelopment authority would help settle a lawsuit filed in June by the Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma that has stalled the federal government’s transfer of the land to local governments.

The tribe contends the land should be transferred into its control because the tribe previously occupied the site. Anderson said he would like to create a redevelopment board that would include members of the tribe, in exchange for the tribe agreeing to drop the lawsuit.

“That’s kind of the tradeoff I’m looking for,” Anderson said. “I’d like for them to come and have a seat at the table and help us look at redevelopment.”

Anderson said he thought the tribe was willing to work with others on redevelopment.

“My take on their interest is that they want to be in the game,” Anderson said. “I think they want to protect their history, and they don’t want to lose any of the potential they have to gain an income stream from that property. I’m convinced they’re not in this for a fight.”

Greg Pitcher, head of the tribe’s development corporation, said he had talked with Anderson and expressed a desire to work with area government officials on a redevelopment authority. But he said the tribe still would seek control of the land instead of a redevelopment authority.

“As I told the mayor, there are lots of models all over the country of how tribes and governments can work together, and we’re willing to look at all of them,” Pitcher said. “Having a development authority that involves the community is definitely something we would look at.”

Pitcher said negotiations between the tribe and the federal government’s General Services Administration, the agency in charge of disposing of the property, were continuing despite published reports the two sides had reached an impasse.

“If we’re at an impasse, we haven’t been notified,” Pitcher said. “I can guarantee you the tribe is still negotiating in good faith, and I assume the government is, too.”

An attempt to reach an official with the General Services Administration was unsuccessful.