A gravel road that serves as a 2,100-foot-long driveway for a rural Lawrence resident one day could become a crowded collector street — featuring smooth pavement, bike lanes, sidewalks and streetlights.

But Douglas County commissioners aren’t yet ready to pump in any of the $1.4 million necessary to make North 1500 Road the urban artery called for in community land-use plans.

“Something big’s going to happen out there,” said Charles Jones, commission chairman. “There’s been a lot of growth and development out there, so something’s going to change.”

The issue reached a crossroads Monday afternoon at the County Courthouse as commissioners mulled whether to permit Jack Gaumnitz to install a gate across the road near his home, just west of Corpus Christi Catholic Church.

Gaumnitz, who has lived for 25 years on about 30 acres at the end of the road, has grown tired of people turning off the nearby South Lawrence Trafficway only to reach the road’s barricade just short of George Williams Way. There, the interlopers dump trash, turn their vehicles around and tear up the sod next to his driveway.

Gaumnitz wants to install a new gate across the road to keep people out. There’s no reason for anybody other than himself to get to the driveway, because the road doesn’t go through.

Commissioners say they’re sympathetic to his plight — at least for now.

Commissioners and city officials say they want to retain the right in the future to drive the road through to George Williams Way, a major street that runs north to Sixth Street and is poised to serve as an outlet for dozens of homes and businesses. George Williams Way already is the major access point for Langston Hughes School and the oversized gym built there to serve the needs of both the school district and the city.

But connecting North 1500 to George Williams Way would take more than a few truckloads of gravel. The entire street would need to be rebuilt to handle an expected spike in daily traffic; the road that now carries fewer than a dozen vehicles a day would be saddled with hundreds or even thousands of cars and trucks, officials say.

The estimated reconstruction bill would be $1.4 million, said Chuck Soules, Lawrence’s public works director. And that total doesn’t include making changes to North 1500’s existing intersection with the trafficway, which now is controlled by a simple stop sign.

North 1500’s overhaul — now slated for no earlier than 2008, Soules said — would become less necessary if another nearby project managed to get financed: construction of a $7.3 million trafficway interchange at 15th Street. The interchange originally was included in plans for the trafficway, but it was eliminated to help finance installation of an interchange at Clinton Parkway.

Either way, Jones said, such decisions likely remain years away.

“It’ll probably be four or five years before whatever we do gets done,” Jones said. “We’re just trying to position ourselves to manage it as effectively as possible.”

The county endorsed the concept. Lawrence city commissioners are expected to review Gaumnitz’s request for a gate April 6.