Courtesy City of Lawrence

Representatives with Verizon have filed plans to build a 120-foot tall communications tower just a few blocks from the site of a previous proposal that brought strong opposition from neighbors and landed City Hall in a federal lawsuit.

According to paperwork filed at the city’s planning office, Verizon is seeking permission to build a new tower on the site of the Ottawa Co-op grain elevators at 2001 Moodie Road. I don’t know if Verizon still uses the catch phrase “Can you hear me now?” but if it does, the company may be hearing from east Lawrence residents, “We told you so.”

If you remember, in late 2014 Verizon and neighbors sparred over a proposal to build a 120-foot tall tower at 1725 Bullene Ave. That’s about three blocks away from the Ottawa Co-op site. Neighbors during the debate frequently said the co-op site would be a more appropriate location for the tower, but Verizon officials insisted they studied the site and it wouldn’t work.

Now, in fairness to Verizon, perhaps they are trying to do something a little different with this new tower, and that has changed the analysis. It is unclear from the application whether this tower is meant to replace the previously proposed tower on Bullene Avenue. City commissioners in December rejected the plans for the Bullene site. A few weeks later, Verizon filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking an order requiring the city to approve the plans. City Attorney Toni Wheeler told me that the federal lawsuit is still pending. So, it is going to take a little more time to sort all this out.

As for the new tower, a Verizon official said in a letter to City Hall that the tower will help ease capacity problems at surrounding towers, including a primary one that serves the KU campus.

“Without the addition of this communications facility Verizon could realize significantly reduced services and very possibly lack of services in an emergency situation,” the company wrote in its application to the city.

The debate over the Bullene site largely centered on how close the tower would be to houses. The co-op site is in more of an industrial area. But the project will involve building a new tower rather than putting an antenna on top of of the co-op’s existing grain elevator. Engineers for Verizon previously said they were not comfortable that the grain elevator could adequately host the antennas. We’ll see whether anybody has a problem with tall structures in that area. The area has long been home to one of the taller structures in the city. The grain elevator is 130 feet tall, according to information submitted to the city. If you remember, the co-op also has filed plans to build a new 75-foot tall grain bin at the site. Here’s a look at the proposed location.

As required by city code, the proposed tower would have space for at least two other wireless phone companies to place their antennas on the tower as well. The tower proposal will seek approval from the planning commission and ultimately the City Commission in the next several weeks.

In other news and notes from around town:

• A couple of weeks ago, we reported there was a lot of speculation that Lawrence’s Holiday Inn and Convention Center was going to become a DoubleTree by Hilton hotel. Well, it is speculation no longer. The ownership group of the hotel has confirmed that it will change the brand in March.

Hulsing Hotels — the Asheville, N.C.-based company that operates the Holiday Inn — said in a release that it plans a “multimillion dollar” renovation of the entire property. The release didn’t provide many details about what will change with the property, other than an extensive renovation.

“The dramatic changes are expected to raise the standard for all hotels and convention centers in the area,” the release states. “The total renovation of the hotel will provide the city with a modern convention facility. Every aspect of the property will be upgraded, including an expansion of the majority of the guest rooms to better accommodate guests.”

Management at the Holiday Inn previously has confirmed that the project won’t involve an expansion of the convention center or banquet space, which currently can host events of around 600 people. Currently, the hotel has 192 guest rooms, which makes it the largest in the city. No word on whether that number will change, given that it sounds like some of the room sizes will expand. The hotel also has 15,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space, which is the largest hotel-based conference and event space in the city.

The DoubleTree brand will bring another upper scale hotel offering to the city. DoubleTree by Hilton has 415 properties across the globe. It is best known for providing guests with a chocolate chip cookie upon their arrival.

The remodel continues a trend by Hulsing Hotels. Although based in North Carolina, its ownership has its roots in Topeka and Manhattan. CEO Dennis Hulsing grew up in Topeka and attended Kansas State. The company owns about 10 hotels, with several of them in the northeast Kansas area. Those include: the Four Points by Sheraton at the Kansas City Sports Complex in KCMO, the Four Points by Sheraton in Manhattan and the Four Points by Sheraton at KCI.

It will be interesting to see how the changes at the Holiday Inn affect the discussion about whether to build a new conference center downtown. Full Disclosure: Owners of The World Company, which publishes the Journal-World and LJWorld.com, have proposed building a conference center, hotel and mixed-use project on downtown property owned by the company.

The city in recent weeks received a report from its conference center consultant that reviewed the Holiday Inn and other conference spaces in town. The report found the community could support 30,000 to 37,500 square feet of new conference center space. Further, the report said the downtown area is where many event planners have expressed an interest in new space. As part of that conference center space, the report estimated the city needed 10,000 to 12,500 square feet of meeting room space to host modern-day conferences. The Holiday Inn, the report noted, has only about 600 square feet of meeting room space. No word yet on whether the renovation will reallocate space within the hotel to address that issue. (Some clarification on the meeting room issue: The Holiday Inn clearly has more than 600 square feet of space to host events. As we noted earlier in this article, it has around 15,000 square feet. But the consultant’s report also tried to differentiate that space between exhibit space, banquet space, breakout meeting room space and other such uses. The city-hired consultant listed the amount of meeting space at the Holiday Inn at 600 square feet. Stephen Horton, general manager at the Holiday Inn, though told me this morning that he disagrees with that assessment. He said the hotel has the ability to configure space in a way that has much more room for breakout meeting space than that. So, we’ll see, perhaps the consultant’s report will be updated with different numbers. You can see the current report here. )

But the City Hall report also noted that some level of public support would likely be needed to build a downtown conference center of 30,000 square feet or more. Given other budget issues the city is dealing with, that will be a major point of discussion at City Hall — assuming commissioners choose to have the discussion at all. The next step in the process is for the City Commission to decide whether it wants to hire the consulting firm to do a phase II report. That report would produce cost estimates for a facility, and give the city a better idea of what type of assistance may be sought. The city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau Advisory Board has recommended the phase II study be conducted, but there is no word yet on when that issue will get a vote by the City Commission.