Douglas County Commission to consider conditional use permits, rezoning

The Douglas County commission meets in the historic courtroom on the second floor of the old county courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

The Douglas County Commission will consider three different conditional use permits Wednesday.

The first two will be considered during its regularly scheduled meeting at 4 p.m. Those are requests to renew existing CUPs for the Stoney Point Hall event center, 1514 North 600 Road, and the Pine Family Tree Nursery, 1782 East 1500 Road.

A third, more complicated series of related requests will be considered at the 6 p.m. time slot the County Commission reserves for issues expected to draw public comment. Mary Miller, a planner with the Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning, said the County Commission will consider a number of requests from the same applicants involving property just southeast of the Lawrence city limits.

The first action is a request from Dan, Denise, Kent and Patricia King to rezone 77.5 acres east of East 1750 Road and north of North 1250 Road from agricultural to heavy industrial. The northeast portion of the property abuts the South Lawrence Trafficway alignment. Filed with the rezoning are CUP requests from the Kings for a construction recycling center, a borrow pit (a trench dug for the excavation of soils or clays used for construction proposes) and for continued use of a residence.

Staff and the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission recommend denial of CUP for the recycling center — which would include an office, scales, rock crusher and stockpile and sales area of raw and recycled construction materials — but approval of those for the borrow pit and residence, Miller said.

The Douglas County Commission meets at 4 p.m. Wednesday at the County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St. Full agendas can be found at douglascountyks.org.