Dill Dennis, design team leader for MFMFM, shows off designs for a new city library among other buildings and residential areas around Lawrence during a February planning session at Spring Hill Suites, 1 Riverfront Plaza. Planning staff members are reviewing a draft report and expect to have a final report later this spring for city and county leaders to review.

The menu has been placed in front of city leaders.

A weeklong planning workshop in February by the PlaceMakers consulting group produced a long list of projects ranging from a new library in a park to a large, walkable, old-style neighborhood south of the Wakarusa River.

Now, city leaders have to decide what fits their tastes.

“There were a lot of good concepts floated, but it is like anything else,” said Sheila Stogsdill, interim planning director. “You have to pick and choose what is reasonable for your community. But it was nice to see the whole menu of items.”

The $250,000 study by the consultants focused on examining how Lawrence could build new developments following the concept of Traditional Neighborhood Design. That means a focus on walkable neighborhoods; denser, urban-style neighborhoods that have a mix of single-family, multifamily and commercial uses; and in Lawrence’s case, an expansion of the look and feel of downtown.

“You will not find another main street that works better than Lawrence’s does,” said Susan Henderson, the project principal for the PlaceMakers group. “Most cities would kill to have this. If we can get the new development in this city to look like its older development, we will be golden.”

PlaceMakers’ ideas

After nearly a week’s worth of meetings with the public, with developers and with city staff members, the consultants came up with a long list of ideas. They included:

¢ Redeveloping an area of New Hampshire Street between Eighth and Ninth streets to accommodate a 40,000-square-foot grocery store; a three-level, 360-space parking garage; and a four-story building that would feature offices and apartments or condominiums.

¢ A 1,000-acre development south of the Wakarusa River, east of U.S. Highway 59, that would feature a mix of housing types, a small neighborhood commercial center that would be within a five-minute walk of most homes, and several hundred acres of rural greenspace.

¢ Building a new library not in the core of downtown – as has been proposed – but rather northeast of Sixth and Tennessee streets in Constant Park along the banks of the Kansas River.

¢ A large, new neighborhood west of the South Lawrence Trafficway that would include three neighborhood commercial centers, homes and a new school that would serve as the anchor of the development.

¢ A major redevelopment of the 23rd and Louisiana streets areas that would convert the intersection into a much more densely developed area of retail, office and apartment/condo uses. The concept would include buildings up to five stories tall on some of the corners.

¢ Redeveloping the shopping center at 19th Street and Haskell Avenue into a new neighborhood that would include 30 to 40 residential lots, a convenience store and about 20,000 square feet of retail space built to look like a mini-downtown block.

¢ Redevelopment of parts of the 600 and 700 blocks of Vermont Street with new buildings that would look similar to older buildings along Massachusetts Street. Those buildings could be marketed as “live-work” units, where entrepreneurs would buy the entire building and use the ground floor for their store or office operations and live on the one or two stories above.

¢ Several design changes to downtown, including an elongated roundabout with a greenspace island near where Sixth, Massachusetts and Vermont streets converge. A roundabout also could be built at Ninth and New Hampshire streets with a clock tower in its center.

Feasibility

Some of the ideas have more traction than others. For example, Stogsdill said her staff believes the plans for the areas south of the Wakarusa River and west of the South Lawrence Trafficway will serve as good starting points for sector plans that her office will be creating.

Owners of the shopping center at 19th and Haskell attended the community meetings in February and expressed some interest in the ideas for that area.

“I love the idea of residential housing there,” Laura Chaney, an owner of the shopping center, said at the time. “I think it would be beautiful, but we never would have thought of doing anything like that.”

Other ideas, though, haven’t taken off. Shortly after the idea for a library in Constant Park was proposed, city commissioners expressed concerns about its feasibility because they feared the site could flood.

Some retailers also have expressed skepticism over some of the ideas for redeveloping existing retail areas. John Kiefer, who owns much of the property near 25th and Iowa Streets – which was studied for redevelopment – said in February that the idea of a conglomeration of smaller shops means more overhead for property owners, which translates into higher rents.

“To try to make little blocks of downtown all over the city … I can’t think of anybody that would pay rent,” Kiefer said. “I have no interest in doing it.”

The general concepts presented by the consultants have been well-received by several city commissioners. Planning staff members currently are reviewing a draft report and expect to have a final report later this spring for commissioners to review.

“This has showed us some exciting opportunities for the community,” Mayor Sue Hack said. “I think we’ll look back 20 or 30 years from now and be glad we did this.”