Here @ Kansas apartment project proposes new, above-ground parking garage for Oread neighborhood

Renderings of the proposed Here @ Kansas parking garage that would be located at 1137 Indiana Street. This is the view that would be seen from Indiana Street. Courtesy: City of Lawrence

When I first reported that plans for a robotic parking garage in the massive Here @ Kansas apartment project near the KU campus had fallen apart, I thought for sure the solution would involve hover boards and reruns of The Jetsons. But new plans filed at City Hall are indicating a more terrestrial solution: Tear down an existing apartment building and replace it with a new, traditional parking garage in the Oread neighborhood.

As we previously reported, the massive Here @ Kansas apartment project that is under construction across from KU’s Memorial Stadium has run into some parking problems. The vendor that was supposed to supply the project with a high-tech, automated parking garage system has filed for bankruptcy, and left Here officials scrambling to figure out how it is going to accommodate the hundreds of tenants that will be part of the multistory apartment/retail building.

The Chicago-based development group that is building the Here @ Kansas project has filed plans at City Hall seeking rezoning for a small apartment building at 1137 Indiana St., which is just to the south of the massive, 500,000-square-foot, multistory Here building. The development group is proposing to raze the apartment building and construct a new 96-space parking garage in its place.

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Here officials are promoting the new garage as a solution that actually will provide more parking than was originally planned for the development, which will feature 237 apartments with 624 bedrooms, plus commercial space for restaurants or retailers that want to locate next to the KU campus. With the addition of the 96-space garage, Here officials believe the total project will have 712 parking spaces. That’s up from the 685 spaces that were proposed as part of the original development.

What’s going on here, it appears, is that the space in the building for the once-planned robotic parking garage will continue to be used for parking, but it won’t be able to accommodate as many spaces as once planned. The proposed parking garage at 1137 Indiana St. will make up for those lost spaces and then some.

At the moment, I’m unclear whether the Here project will include an automated parking garage of any kind, or whether that space is simply being converted into a traditional parking garage. At one point, the development group said it was looking for a different vendor for an automated garage system. Whether an automated garage will be part of the project may be an important point to some. The idea of using new technology to tackle the parking challenges in The Oread neighborhood was one of the selling points the project used to garner an 85 percent, 10-year property tax rebate for the project. (UPDATE: I got in touch this morning with project leader Jim Heffernan, and he confirmed that the project no longer will include the automated parking garage, but instead will feature a more traditional parking garage.)

If the project doesn’t have an automated parking garage, I suppose the City Commission could use that omission to modify the controversial tax rebate package, which was approved by the previous City Commission. But such a move likely would send shivers through the development community, given that the project is still meeting its original parking obligations and then some.

Instead, the debate at City Hall may be a more traditional one: Will this parking garage fit into the Oread neighborhood? I don’t have great renderings to share of the proposed garage currently, but you can see a little bit of the shape and size from this one below. The garage is not proposed to be a tall one, but rather is planned to have one level below ground and one level above ground.

Renderings of the proposed Here @ Kansas parking garage that would be located at 1137 Indiana Street. This is the view that would be seen from Indiana Street. Courtesy: City of Lawrence

The Oread is a neighborhood that is familiar with parking garages. KU already operates a parking garage in the neighborhood near 11th and Indiana streets, in addition to having some surface parking lots in the neighborhood. So, it will be interesting to see how the neighborhood responds to this proposal.

“We think it will be a very low profile building,” Heffernan told me on Thursday. “We’ll also be trying to use identical materials that were approved by the city for our other building.”

City commissioners will have to give their approval to the plans in order for them to proceed. The property at 1137 Indiana — which currently is owned by a group led by Lawrence resident Ed Carter — must be rezoned to accommodate the parking garage. The property currently is zoned for RM 32 apartment zoning. The group is seeking the property to be rezoned to a mixed-used zoning designation.

Look for the project to get hearings at City Hall — first at the Planning Commission and then at the City Commission — in the next couple of months. Heffernan said he hopes to have city approvals by the end of March, which would keep the project on track to open by the beginning of the next KU school year.

“The project is being very well received,” Heffernan said of the early response from renters.

A rendering of the HERE Kansas luxury apartment complex, currently under construction at 1111 Indiana St.

• One other quick item of note with this project: The latest plans filed by the Chicago development group say that when the Here project is completed, it will be the “largest privately owned enclosed structure in the city of Lawrence.” I’ve heard that claim or something similar to it before, but it is not accurate. The Here project is slated to be about 454,000 square feet, according to the development group. I’ve always thought that the Kmart Distribution center along the Kansas Turnpike was quite a bit larger than that. I checked with the Douglas County Appraiser’s office this morning, and they confirmed that’s the case. The Kmart Distribution Center has about 1.05 million square feet, according to the county’s records.

(UPDATE: I chatted with Heffernan this morning, and he said the statement in the plans should have read that the building will be the largest privately-owned residential structure in the city. That may be accurate. I haven’t checked that out.)

The issue isn’t really important to the matter at hand, except this project at times has attempted to “sell the sizzle” to city commissioners. That’s fine, but that means it is important that commissioners understand the true situation.

The development group in its filings also has stated that when completed, the project will “represent the single largest taxpaying parcel in the city.” That claim will take a little more time to fact-check, but it seems like one that should be examined.