The city of Lawrence is preparing to extend its reach into an urbanizing area of Douglas County.

And Gene Sweeney can’t wait.

“Lawrence is trying to keep up with Kansas City and Topeka,” said Sweeney, a retiree who last week sold for development 10 acres east of O’Connell Road southeast of the city. “It’s getting to be almost like Johnson County. Give it another 50 years, we’ll be connected with them. It won’t be in my time, but it’s coming.”

Development could be coming sooner than many people think, as city officials work up plans for rebuilding O’Connell Road — and clearing the way for annexation of about 570 acres of property into the city.

Behind the push is demand for more business, duplex and single-family home sites on the way to the Kansas City area, and a city plan to keep up with market forces.

City officials already are working to annex the property at Lawrence’s southeastern edge, possibly later this year. The plans come as officials prepare for a nearly $3 million reconstruction of O’Connell Road.

The existing road — a part-gravel, part- chip-and-seal surface lined on both sides by ditches — will be replaced with a full complement of city-standard road features: two lanes for auto traffic, two lanes for bike traffic, 5-foot-wide sidewalks on each side, along with curbs, gutters and underground drainage pipes.

There also will be a traffic-calming roundabout installed at the intersection of O’Connell Road and 28th Street, a prime unloading point for traffic heading out of the Prairie Park neighborhood onto Kansas Highway 10 for trips to the Kansas City area.

“It’s logical,” City Manager Mike Wildgen said. “It’s been part of our master plan for growth out there sometime in the future. And that future will be sooner rather than later at this point.”

Construction of the road project — to be financed by the city and the Kansas Department of Transportation — is expected to begin late this year and be done by the end of 2004, said Terese Gorman, city engineer.

Other infrastructure would follow. A large water line was installed alongside O’Connell Road within the past five years, leaving only new sewer pipes to open the development spigot south of K-10, north of East 1300 Road (which would be 31st Street in the city) and close to the Douglas County Jail.

And with Farmland Industries’ nitrogen fertilizer plant idle on the north side of K-10, at least 100 acres of the plant’s “buffer ground” soon could be open for development, said Kevan Vick, Farmland’s general manager for nitrogen manufacturing.

“Multiple” offers to buy have poured in for the property, Vick said, as the Kansas City, Mo.-based cooperative seeks to shed assets as it moved through bankruptcy proceedings.

For Sweeney, whose parents ran cattle on property east of O’Connell Road before the plant opened in the 1950s, the plant’s closing could be just the spark the area needs to grow.

“I never really did like it out there because of the chemical smoke,” Sweeney said. “It looks to me since the chemical plant is going to be out, they’ll probably build a lot more out there.”