For five years, Bonnie Johnson has watched as growth along South Iowa Street has driven up the volume of traffic in her neighborhood.

She said she particularly has concerns about the intersection of 31st and Louisiana streets.

“You just see that intersection … at certain times of the day, and it just gets really backed up,” Johnson said.

As president of the Indian Hills Neighborhood Assn., Johnson worried when developers proposed a 324-unit apartment complex for the southeast corner of 31st Street and Ousdahl Road. They proposed the complex in late summer.

“We’re concerned about traffic on Louisiana,” Johnson said. “That would be a lot of students, and we figure a good portion of those students would head down Louisiana to go to campus. It’s already a pretty congested street.”

According to city planning staff, the apartment complex, dubbed The Exchange at Lawrence, would have about 800 bedrooms in 14 apartment buildings on 24.5 acres. It would market high-end apartments primarily to students.

“The city hasn’t done a south area plan in a number of years, so we really don’t know how this proposal would fit in with future development in that area,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the neighborhood association requested an area plan for south Lawrence in 2000.

Such a plan would identify specific land uses for areas as far south as the Wakarusa River. Since 2000, that request has become part of a backlog of long-range planning projects in the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Office.

“For the last several years, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about areas in the northwest and along the Sixth Street corridor,” said Sheila Stogsdill, acting planning director.

Dealing with these more pressing developments has pushed issues like the South Lawrence Area Plan down the list.

“Priorities shift as there are development proposals knocking on the door,” Stogsdill said.

Stogsdill said it could take four to six months to complete an area plan.

“However, we find sometimes those issues are not so straightforward and can tend to take much longer than that,” she said.

Plans for the apartment complex still need approval from the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission and the Lawrence City Commission. The planning commission already has recommended annexing the land into the city, but split on a 5-5 vote about whether to rezone the land to allow for an apartment complex.

Johnson hopes the city can complete an area plan before allowing any future development in south Lawrence.