Is Lawrence housing overpriced? Do Lawrence developments create too much controversy? What’s the outlook for the rest of 2003?

A panel of four Lawrence real estate and development experts recently gathered at the request of the Journal-World to answer those questions and several others.

Here’s a brief look at the panelists and an excerpt of questions and answers from the roundtable discussion, which was broadcast last month on Sunflower Broadband’s River City Weekly:

• Marilyn Bittenbender is a commercial real estate agent in the Lawrence office of Grubb & Ellis/The Winbury Group.
• Doug Brown is senior commercial partner for Lawrence’s Coldwell Banker McGrew Real Estate.
• Tim Herndon is a co-owner of Landplan Engineering, a Lawrence-based firm that develops master plans for a variety of commercial and residential developments.
• J. Stewart is the president of Terravest Construction Co. Inc., a Lawrence company that specializes in residential building.
• Greg Hurd, host of River City Weekly, moderated the discussion.


A panel of Lawrence Real Estate and Development experts talk about the challenges for the rest of 2003 during a roundtable discussion at the 6News studio. From left are J. Stewart, president of Terravest Construction Co.; Tim Herndon, co-owner of Landplan Engineering; moderator Greg Hurd, host of River City Weekly; Marilyn Bittenbender, real estate agent in the Lawrence office of Grubb & Ellis/The Winbury Group; and Doug Brown, senior commercial partner for Lawrence's Coldwell Banker McGrew Real Estate.

Q: If you had to sum up last year’s business in one or two sentences, how would you describe it?

Stewart: Extremely tough.

Herndon: It was a year of reassessing who we serve and the product we call the centerpiece of our business. Really, it was a year of making sure we are safe in less than perfect times.

Bittenbender: During the ’90s, we were all experiencing more demand than there was supply for about all commercial product types. During the last year or so, we’ve seen that flip. There’s more supply than demand. The biggest change is we’ve seen a swapping out of supply and demand ratios.

Brown: It is the first time we have had such a glut in office space that I’ve known of in Lawrence. It has been very, very tough for the office market. Retail has changed a little bit as well. Certainly 2002 was much slower.

Q: When you look back at this time next year, what do you hope to see? What do you see coming down the pike for this year?

Brown: I think it is going to be better. I think we’re on the upswing. I think our biggest challenge will be in the office market. Getting that market correction to take place. Maybe the prices will come down and people can make some good deals on offices and that will lower that vacancy rate.

Bittenbender: I concur with Doug. We’re starting to see some positive activity in the first quarter. Hopefully that will signify some positive absorption and start to bring that vacancy rate down. (Earlier Bittenbender said her company conducted a study that showed the vacancy rate for office space in Lawrence was 17 percent. She said it may be the end of the decade before the Lawrence market gets back to a more average vacancy rate of 8 percent to 10 percent.)

Q: This past year, there have been some commercial real estate disputes: Sixth and Wakarusa, 31st and Iowa, and others. Do you find such disputes healthy for the community, troubling, necessary?

Brown: In a town like Lawrence you have to expect it. We have such a unique case in Lawrence, and in many university towns it is the same. I don’t think it is necessarily unhealthy. I think it is unfortunate that we can’t find a balance, and that we can’t discuss things prior to them becoming such huge battles. Some of the recent deals we have had in the past 10 years have been absolute battles … A lot of headaches were formed from those battles. It’s unfortunate we had to get there. I don’t think it’s something we can really avoid and I don’t think it’s necessarily unhealthy. It’s unfortunate sometimes.

Bittenbender: I think for a university community it is more typical than in some other communities. People tend to be very engaged and very conscious about what’s going on in their community. I do think it points up, in my mind, some flaws with our planning process. I think all too often we focus on the wrong issues about planning.

Q: How are we doing in competing with surrounding communities in terms of the time it takes to develop a project in Lawrence?

Stewart: I don’t think we are competing. We’re very much behind the 8-ball. If we didn’t have the university and the other draws to make up for that (the slow development process), we wouldn’t be in business here. We would all be gone.

Herndon: We live in a cultural oasis. We would all agree on that. Lawrence has inherent in its character many cultural attributes that make it a place lots of people will fight to settle in. But we’re also in the pathway of growth that radiates from the greater Kansas City area. That is making other surrounding communities a viable place to do development projects. We have lost some high profile projects to some of those communities … The main point is we’re fortunate to have some of the cultural attributes that are a draw for the community in spite of the difficulties we encounter with development. I don’t think the attributes necessarily justify the difficulties, though.

Q: Let’s turn our attention to housing for a moment. Has Lawrence housing become too high-priced?

Stewart: I entirely believe so. As I was saying before we got together, all of us who have children should go out and hug them and say goodbye because you can’t afford to live here. Our cost of housing has gotten so high, but it is not any one thing you can point your finger at … It starts with our land costs, it starts with our building codes. It starts with the basics and it just goes out from there.