photo by: Mike Yoder

This view from Memorial Stadium, over district 1 of the Oread neighborhood, shows a portion of Fambrough Drive at bottom and the neighborhood to the north. Landlords in the Oread neighborhood are disgruntled about some new, years-in-the-making design guidelines that passed the city's planning commission July 25 and will next go to the city commission for final consideration.

One piece of a proposed, long-debated, 132-page set of guidelines for property owners in the Oread neighborhood has produced consternation among some landlords.

Talks that led to the Oread Design Guidelines started in 2011 with concerns about parking, trash, privacy, noise and code compliance in the area. The guidelines outline rules for new development or redevelopment, detailing how things such as porches, fences, windows and doors should look in order to conform to the history of the neighborhood.

A small part of the document is a prohibition on duplexes having “stacked” parking in alleyways, in which one car is parked directly in front of another. That type of parking is allowed under current city code, and the change would mean fewer parking spaces — and tenants — in a single unit.

The guidelines won a recommendation of approval from the Lawrence Planning Commission on Monday. The issue will next go to the City Commission for final consideration.

“With the guidelines, you have the ability to park five cars, whereas now you have the ability to park more than five, stacked,” said Planning Director Scott McCullough on Monday. “So, where you would have an eight-bed duplex, four on each side, you now would have to divide that up to three and two, thereby reducing the intensity for duplexes.”

But two landlords in the neighborhood, and one person representing multiple investors, cited concerns.

Rick Kupper told commissioners Monday, “every landlord in the area I talk to is against this.”

“We don’t know quite what is going on. We just know there is constant taking,” property manager Serina Hearn said at the time. “We put so much money into these properties. I just want to say, who does this benefit?”

Hearn has been a property manager since 1999 and owned a total 40 houses in the Oread neighborhood during that time, she said. The neighborhood forms around Kansas University, stretching from Ninth Street to the north down to 17th Street, cupping Memorial Stadium and the campus’ east side.

“Some things are unclear as to whether a property has to be rebuilt to fall back to a different parking standard,” said property owner Chris Schmid. “That would affect our income that landlords operate off of.”

McCullough reiterated Monday that the guidelines aren’t retroactive — they would be applied only to new development or additions to what’s existing. But the new standards would mean properties that don’t currently meet them would be nonconforming.

A couple of planning commissioners, Bryan Culver and Patrick Kelly, asked that city commissioners consider ways to mitigate the affects on property owners of nonconformities.

photo by: Mike Yoder

One of hundreds of signs posted in the Oread neighborhood to inform residents of upcoming meetings on the neighborhood's design.

“What I do have concern about are the wholesale changes that could create legal, nonconforming uses in these areas and the disadvantage that could create for investment in these neighborhoods,” Culver said.

Kelly said he’d like to know more about how the nonconformities with the new guidelines could financially affect property owners.

Renters make up a large portion of the Oread neighborhood, which is divided into six districts.

In district three, just to the east of the KU campus, 82 percent of properties are rented, according to the city’s rental license information. District two, just next to district three, is 67 percent rentals. District five, the northeast corner of the neighborhood, comprises 74 percent rental properties.

“A lot of investment is made in the neighborhood under certain expectations,” Schmid said. “We want to see that as long as we’re being good landlord and good business people and doing our tenants well, that we would be able to continue on.”

A date for the City Commission to review the guidelines has not yet been established.

Monday was the planning commission’s second time reviewing — and approving — the document. It was discovered after the first look that the city did not follow code in notifying residents about the guidelines. Code requires signs to be posted on property that will be affected by zoning or development code changes.

After the discovery, city staff placed eight yellow signs at every intersection in the Oread neighborhood.