Kansas City, Mo. ? A new study is out that contradicts frequent developer complaints that Lawrence is a costly and time-consuming city in which to construct a project.

Lawrence was ranked the best among 14 Kansas City-metro communities in terms of how quickly the city approves a major commercial or industrial project, the authors of a study by the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Lewis White Real Estate Center found.

The study, which was released Monday, found Lawrence also was second-best among the 14 cities in terms of the total amount of development and building permit fees charged.

City officials were cautiously pleased with the results.

“This is an area that is a continuing point of emphasis for us,” said City Manager David Corliss. “We are still finding areas where we can improve the process.”

Some development professionals weren’t convinced the study gave a full picture of the city’s development process.

“We knew this was maybe not going to be the most accurate measure of what we are mostly concerned about over here,” said Kelvin Heck, a broker with Lawrence’s Grubb Ellis/The Winbury Group. “Over here it is the political process that is more time consuming. The published process probably works pretty well as written, and the pricing is probably pretty fair.”

As part of the study, the planning departments of 14 cities were presented with two projects: a $9.6 million, 60,000-square-foot office building and a $10 million, 100,000-square-foot industrial building. The cities then were asked to provide an estimate on the total amount of development and building permit fees and the total amount of time it would take to review and approve the projects.

For the office project, Lawrence planners estimated $62,264 in fees. The industrial project was similar at $66,080. In both cases, Lawrence estimated the review time for the projects — which were assumed to already have proper zoning in place — at six weeks.

Overland Park ended up having the highest fees for both projects — about $250,000 for the office project and about $350,000 for the industrial project, both of which included multiple impact fees and excise taxes. Leawood, Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., tied for having the longest review time, at 20 weeks.

The study compared Lawrence with: Blue Springs, Mo.; Gardner; Independence, Mo.; Kansas City, Mo.; Leawood; Lee’s Summit, Mo.; Lenexa; Liberty, Mo.; Olathe; Overland Park; Riverside, Mo.; Shawnee; and the Unified Government of Kansas City, Kan.

The study was conducted by students and faculty at the UMKC business school, but was done at the request of the area chapter of the Society for Industrial and Office Realtors, which Heck is a member of.

“I think one thing this study should do is cause us to ask why we aren’t doing better attracting more businesses here given our cost structure and development structure comes off looking pretty good,” Heck said. “We need to get to the bottom of that question.”