Lawrence residents, here’s your chance to go back to the future.

A team of 16 consultants will arrive Wednesday and be in Lawrence through Feb. 6. They will play host to 11 meetings for landowners, developers, elected leaders and the public.

Their topic of conversation will be simple: How should Lawrence grow?

Several city commissioners and staff members have said it is important for the community to pay attention and participate in the weeklong process, which is costing the city $250,000 in consulting fees.

“I think this very well could be the turning point in determining what the city looks like in 20 years,” City Commissioner Boog Highberger said.

But here’s the thing: This team of high-powered planners already has an opinion on that subject. The company – PlaceMakers – is a consulting firm that specializes in creating regulations for a specific type of development style known as Traditional Neighborhood Design.

In other words, get ready to head back to the future.

“You will not find another main street that works better than Lawrence’s does,” Susan Henderson, the group’s project principal, said during a visit to the city earlier this month. “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.”

Charming neighborhoods

That doesn’t mean that all new development will look exactly like downtown, or even Old West Lawrence. Instead, the Traditional Neighborhood Design concept focuses more on issues such as ensuring that streets are built in an old-style grid system instead of in a suburban style that emphasizes curving roadways and dead-end cul-de-sacs. It focuses on making sure there are plenty of walkways, parks and public gathering places.

Density – putting more people into a given space – also is embraced rather than frowned upon. The TND concept also encourages the mixing of uses. In other words, apartments can be next to single-family homes, and retail and offices can be within walking distance of it all. Normally, the developments also include strict design guidelines to ensure that all the buildings look like they belong together.

“When we have been out talking to people about this concept, we normally have started out by saying, ‘remember the neighborhood that you grew up in?'” City Commissioner Sue Hack said. ” ‘Remember the neighborhood that you rode your bike two blocks to get to the grocery store?’

“Those are the type of charming neighborhoods that we have had, and those are the type that we can have again.”

Mandatory or voluntary

The big question is whether City Hall will begin mandating that Lawrence start building neighborhoods in the old-style way.

For the moment, Hack and Highberger – the commission’s two biggest supporters of the concept – are saying no.

“I love the idea, but I don’t want it to be mandatory right now because I know it is not what everyone else wants,” Highberger said.

After all, one person’s charming old neighborhood is another person’s parking nightmare that features houses so close together that noisy neighbors become a problem.

But Hack and Highberger said they aren’t ruling out that someday the city will mandate TND design for certain new areas of town. But both said that likely wouldn’t happen until after the community has had a chance to see some TND projects develop and work.

Henderson said she’ll challenge the community to think in large terms about how to use the new Traditional Neighborhood Design code that her team will be drafting for the city.

“There’s a political decision that has to be made, and it is one the community has to get involved in,” Henderson said. “Where is it mandatory and where is it optional? I think it should be mandatory in downtown and the older neighborhoods.

“I also would like to suggest that for clarity of vision and ease of administration and predictability of development, I think it should be mandatory for properties that are annexed. For a city to say that it is going to do this for annexation would be quite visionary.”

But she also said cities have to realize that there will always be a certain amount of suburban-style development in a community.

“We’re completely unrealistic if we think we’re going to eliminate the need for car-dependent retail,” Henderson said. “Very few of us are ever going to walk to the grocery store for our week’s supply of food.”

Wait and see

Several folks who make their living dealing with development and codes said they’re taking a wait-and-see approach to what the consultants create.

“I think they have some interesting things to say,” said Todd Thompson, a Lawrence lawyer who works with developers. “They really aren’t going to create anything final. It is all still in the hands of city government to approve. The fact that we’re getting something new to consider is a plus.”

The new code could contain some incentives for Lawrence developers, Henderson said. She said that in communities that don’t make the TND style of development mandatory, the most common incentive is to allow projects that follow the code to receive administrative approval, rather than going through a planning commission or city commission.

“If you can save them months worth of time, then they are strongly motivated,” Henderson said. “Lawrence doesn’t have a real good track record of approving projects in a timely manner.”

For that matter, though, Lawrence doesn’t have a very good record of timely approval of new codes, either. The city’s new development code, which took effect in July, was in the works for more than five years. That fact has led to skepticism.

“Sometimes, we try too hard to make rocket science out of this,” said Price Banks, a Lawrence development lawyer who also has served as the city’s planning director. “Every time someone goes to a meeting, they come back thinking they want to change the entire complexion of the community. We could just fix some of the messes we have and be better off.”

Thompson said he also hopes that the process will be more than just a session of wish lists and dreams.

“It think it is easy to come in and say ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we did this and this and this,'” Thompson said. “But in my real life, I have to deal with real-life economics, real-life personalities, real-life wants and needs of the community.”

Hack said she believes the consultants will produce something that is real. The expectation is that the team of consultants will produce a draft code that planning commissioners and city commissioners could draft in short order to allow new TND projects to proceed.

“I think what we’ll be doing will be pretty important,” Hack said. “I would encourage people to participate. You don’t want to sit back and let someone else make important decisions for you.”