Lawrence Journal-World opinion section

Lawrence city commissioners should be wary of allowing the large HERE @ Kansas apartment and retail project east of Kansas University’s Memorial Stadium to open based on a plan that partially addresses parking issues at the site.

The developers of the project have run into problems because the contractor they had counted on to install a robotic parking system went bankrupt. The space that had been allowed for the robotic system wouldn’t accommodate as many traditional parking spaces, leaving the project short of the parking requirements set by the city. Now, HERE officials are floating different options for solving the parking dilemma.

When they last came before the City Commission, the developers were planning to build a parking facility on neighboring property but they now have abandoned that plan.

The proposal now before the commission is to provide 510 spaces in the building’s garage, 77 fewer than with the robotic system in the city-approved plan, and supplement that with 108 on-street parking spaces. The on-street, metered spaces originally were intended to serve retail and restaurant customers, but those business spaces would remain vacant until the parking issues are resolved. Based on those numbers, the developers are asking the city to allow them to lease all but 32 bedrooms of the 624-bedroom apartment building.

The city’s planning staff is recommending approval of this plan. The staff report indicates that, with a valet parking system, the garage can adequately accommodate the 510 spaces, and the city intends to withhold electrical meters for the apartments that must remain vacant. Despite the staff’s recommendation, many questions about this project remain.

First, HERE presumably plans to adhere to its plans to lease parking spaces in the garage separately from apartments, meaning that residents with cars won’t necessarily have reserved parking. Either because of the cost or the inconvenience of the valet parking, they may opt out of paying for a parking space and rely on parking in the already crowded Oread neighborhood.

The metered on-street parking spaces are suitable for retail and restaurant customers, but don’t serve the needs of most apartment residents. They also won’t be reserved for apartment residents, which makes it an iffy proposition to include them in the developers’ calculation. Some of the developers’ assumptions about the use of the garage also are questionable, including their estimate that only 20 percent of the cars in the garage will be used each day. They also think they will have enough spaces in the garage to accommodate guests, but it’s unclear how they can guarantee that space.

These and other issues need to be addressed sooner rather than later. How can the developers guarantee that most of their residents with cars will use their parking facilities and not further crowd neighborhood parking? How long will the retail and restaurant space that was supposed to be a key attraction for this project remain empty while the developers figure out the parking issues? Once the project is open and mostly leased, city officials will have far less leverage over the final resolution of the parking plan.

The HERE developers obviously face a difficult problem, but the solutions they are proposing don’t fully address the city’s concerns. The city certainly has a stake in this project being successful, but allowing so much of the complex to open while developers still are working on the parking issues seems like a big risk.