Olathe ? A developer is seeking exclusive rights to turn the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant near De Soto into a new community that would include a life sciences and technology research park.

Johnson County officials, who got their first look at the plan Thursday, insisted there was no preordained deal to have Kessinger/Hunter develop the 9,065-acre site into a new community the size of Leawood. It would include a research park that the Kansas Board of Regents would help create.

The board told the Journal-World it had no knowledge of the plan.

Don Jarrett, chief legal counsel for the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, said, “Now is the time if there are any folks out there to come forth and express any interest in developing Sunflower.”

Commissioners have agreed to give serious developers with a business plan and the capital until Nov. 15 to make their intentions known.

In a Sept. 23 letter, Charles Hunter, chairman of Kansas City, Mo.-based Kessinger/Hunter, said that if his firm is to proceed with cleanup of byproducts from munitions manufacturing and with development efforts, the county must deal with no other developer. The letter also called for the county to take title to the land and to have the transaction details completed by Dec. 31.

“Things are significantly picking up momentum,” Don Jarrett, the commission’s chief legal counsel, told commissioners Thursday.

Jarrett presented estimates showing that the cost of the federal cleanup was now expected to cost $72 million and take three to seven years.

Once the land is cleaned up, Kessinger/Hunter officials say, Sunflower would be a community surrounded on up to three sides by parks, green space and other public uses.

Earlier congressional plans to transfer some 2,000 acres of contamination-free land to the Johnson County Park and Recreation District may now make the Sunflower negotiations more complicated, Jarrett said.

Originally, the land was to be transferred as a public benefit transaction, meaning the land was free to the county but came with strings attached. What is now being considered is a purchase of the land that does not restrict its future use, Jarrett told commissioners.