Plans filed for new retirement community in west Lawrence

Sometimes after a basketball game, I worry about finding where I parked my car. After last night’s triple overtime, heart-straining thriller, I worried about finding a retirement home. Lucky for me, plans have been filed for a new retirement living community in far west Lawrence.

If you remember, in July we reported that a project called the Village Cooperative had expressed interest in building a new senior living facility near Sixth Street and Queens Road. Well, the Minnesota-based development firm behind the project has now filed plans at City Hall to begin building the project.

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The development group Real Estate Equities Development has filed plans to rezone about four acres of property at 5325 W. Sixth St. from a single-family zoning designation to a medium density apartment zoning. But this project will be a bit different from other apartment projects in town. The project only will be open to tenants 62 years and older, and residents won’t actually be owners of the units they live in, but rather will own a share in a cooperative.

Plans call for 52 living units, so each tenant will own 1/52nd of the entire housing complex. It will be a different type of housing option for Lawrence seniors. A representative with the company told me in July that an advantage of the cooperative ownership structure is that the cooperative is responsible for all the maintenance of the property, even for the items that need fixing inside your unit. For example, if the dishwasher breaks, it will be the responsibility of the cooperative to fix or replace it since technically the cooperative owns it. (I’m uncertain who fixes the TV when a thrown boot hits it after a referee misses a call. If you figure out who is responsible, send them to my house.)

The plans on file with City Hall provide a few more details about the project.

• All 52 units will be in a single, three-story building that also will include a community room, a club room and an outdoor patio with fireplace.

• The project will include a heated, underground parking garage that will have spaces for 58 vehicles.

• The project will be at the southwest corner of the intersection of Sixth Street and Queens Road. Well, sort of. Queens Road doesn’t technically extend south of Sixth Street. The property currently is just served by a driveway. The nearest city street to the south of the property is Branchwood Drive. According to the plans, Branchwood Drive will be extended north to connect with Sixth Street. That will mean the neighborhood just south of Sixth Street will have a new way to access Sixth Street. But it also means that I may throw more boots at my dashboard GPS. Lawrence, it appears will have another intersection where two streets directly across from each other have mismatched names. Think Iowa and Bob Billings/15th Street or Wakarusa and Legends Drive/Inverness Drive. I’m sure there are several more, but my GPS is not talking to me at the moment.

The plans don’t provide all the details on the size of the units, but previously a representative with the company had told me that units will range from about 870 feet to about 1,500 square feet. Prices for a share in the cooperative would likely be about $75,000 to $125,000. Residents then would pay a monthly fee of about $900 to $1,500 per month, with that fee covering property taxes, maintenance, some utilities, and other such items.

I’ve got a call into the project manager of the development to find out if that information is still accurate, and also what the latest timeline is for the project.

UPDATE: I got a call back from Shane Wright, project manager and partner in the development group for Village Cooperative. He said the group hopes to start construction in the summer and have the facility ready for owners to move into in summer 2017. The project is scheduled to go before the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission in late January and before the City Commission in February.

Wright said interest in the project has been strong, with about 50 percent of the units pre-sold.

“We have a group of buyers made up mostly of Lawrence residents who have been itching for a product that suits their needs,” Wright said. “We’ve even had some who had considered moving out of Lawrence to find the right product.”

Wright said the development is offering units ranging from a one-bedroom to units as large as a two-bedroom, two-bath with a den. He said the cooperative style of ownership has been a selling point, but he said residents also like the northwest Lawrence location and that the project is relatively small at 52 units.

“It is going to be a smaller, intimate community neighborhood,” Wright said. “They are excited about the relationships they’ll form. Several of them already have started meeting on a weekly basis. It is becoming a social network.”