When Jo Andersen moved into the Prairie Park neighborhood years ago, she loved the peace, quiet and rural setting.

But looking across the highway to the Farmland fertilizer plant was a constant reminder of future changes, she said Wednesday.

“I thought, if Farmland ever goes out, we’re going to have a lot of neighbors.”

She may be right. Lawrence developers Doug Compton and Bill Newsome have purchased more than a hundred acres of land that used to be part of Farmland’s green-space buffer between the plant and the neighborhood. Now they want to turn 55 acres on the southwest corner of Kansas Highway 10 and East 1600 Road into a new development of duplexes, single-family homes and apartments.

“(The area) was almost a natural for development,” Andersen said. “There just aren’t that many places to build in Lawrence.”

Newsome and Compton plan to build more than 100 living units on the site. They also plan to follow up with a major commercial development on the other side of East 1600 Road. Ernest Duncan, who’s lived in the area for three years, said he’d approve of more commercial space as long as it came with a grocery store.

“We have to go clear down to Checkers (on 23rd Street)” Duncan said. “It takes 15 minutes with all the traffic.”

Duncan also says any new development should include improvements to East 1600 Road, a major thoroughfare for Prairie Park families looking for access to K-10.

“It needs to be repaired, widened, have shoulders put in … it’s pretty rough,” Duncan said.

Scott Nissen, a five-year resident of Prairie Park, said he believed the new development could help the neighborhood, but it would require a great deal of planning.

“They’re going to need to build another elementary school,” Nissen said.

Two of Nissen’s children attend Prairie Park School, and he said the school couldn’t handle a major influx of new students. Prairie Park’s principal, David Williams, said the school could handle a few new pupils at a time, but not an “explosion” of growth.

“We’re really close to capacity now,” said Williams. “You hope (the growth) is slow, but if it’s not … you just do the best you can.”

The project will be up for debate at Wednesday’s meeting of the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission.