Confusion reigns.

That was report No. 1 that city commissioners received Thursday as part of a $250,000 city-sponsored, weeklong planning workshop. At least that’s the view among the development community, consultants said.

“I have never been in a community where I have heard such consistent complaints about the development review process,” said Jennifer Hurley, one of the leaders of the PlaceMakers consulting team. “When we came here and had a full day of meetings, we heard word-for-word the same complaints: We don’t know what to do, we don’t know what the City Commission wants and it takes forever to get anything approved.”

And that process, Hurley said, has created another problem: lack of trust among everyone involved in the development process, ranging from developers to neighborhood leaders.

“The depth of the trust problem is really striking here,” Hurley said. “It is more than in most communities.”

PlaceMakers has a team of 16 consultants in Lawrence to study how the city could adopt a new development code that would promote Traditional Neighborhood Design, a concept that focuses on creating neighborhoods in a more “old-style” way.

Quicker reviews

Consultants told city commissioners Thursday that any new code likely should have an incentive: granting developers a review process that reduces the amount of time spent before the Planning Commission and the City Commission. Instead, much of the review would come at the staff level.

The expedited review would encourage developers to try the Traditional Neighborhood Design concept, which focuses on mixing types of uses and emphasizes pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods. The review process could knock several weeks or even months off the typical approval timeline, which sometimes can take 18 months or more in Lawrence.

“It would require a lot more upfront work but a lot less public meeting time,” consultant Nathan Norris said.

The idea was met with skepticism by some commissioners.

“I don’t understand how the neighbors would have any idea what the plan for a development was, if this is a fairly fast-track process,” City Commissioner David Schauner said.

Other commissioners, though, attempted to head off concerns that the public would be shut out of the process. City Commissioner Sue Hack, who has been touting the Traditional Neighborhood Design concept, said an expedited process could be created that would allow for public participation.

“This is Lawrence, Kansas, and we are built on public comment,” Hack said. “We can and would build that into the process.”

Consultants, though, said they would encourage the city to work on adopting a process that encourages more focused public comment on developments rather than the wide-ranging list of concerns that create marathon Planning and City Commission meetings.

Hurley said that would be possible with the new code – dubbed the Smart Code – because it would be more concise and easier to understand than the city’s traditional development code. Developments would get staff approval if they met all the conditions of the code, she said, but if a development didn’t meet all conditions, it wouldn’t be approved.

“Don’t bog every single development down in this public review process,” Hurley said.

Instead, Hurley said the City Commission could do an after-the-fact review – perhaps every six months or so – of all development projects given approval to determine whether staff members are properly reviewing the projects.

Mandatory changes

Schauner, who is a lawyer, said he was skeptical that any code or legal document could be written so clearly that it eliminated the possibility of multiple interpretations.

“If you could write something that clear, I would be out of work,” Schauner said. “We wouldn’t need lawyers.”

The question of what type of review process to use for Traditional Neighborhood Design projects could be a key one, if commissioners follow the consultants’ advice. That’s because the consultants are pushing commissioners to require all newly annexed property to develop in the Traditional Neighborhood Design style. Existing properties in the city limits could use the existing code – which allows for suburban-style development – or the new code.

City commissioners, though, stopped short of saying they would require any new development to use the new concept.

“That would be an awful big change,” Mayor Mike Amyx said. “I would have to think long and hard about it.”

Consultants said mandating use of Traditional Neighborhood Design in new areas might be the best avenue for the city to follow because the design concept works best when used in large areas.

“We think this would get you more of what you want,” Hurley said.

The consultants are in town through Tuesday, when they will deliver a draft code to city commissioners at their 6:35 p.m. meeting at City Hall. The consultants will have a public meeting to update the community on their work from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. today at the SpringHill Suites by Marriott, 1 Riverfront Plaza.