photo by: City of Lawrence

A slide of a city staff presentation shows components of the recommended design for the downtown bus transfer area.

City leaders have approved a design concept for the city’s new bus station, but following concerns from downtown businesses have asked for additional options to consider for the location and design of a smaller bus transfer location downtown.

As part of its meeting Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission voted unanimously to move forward with an $833,000 contract with Wendel Companies for the final design and construction administration services for the bus station. The location for the main bus station was decided in 2019, but Tuesday’s meeting saw several business owners near the recommended location for the downtown transfer area speak in opposition to the proposal, with a few questioning whether a downtown transfer location was needed at all.

Commissioners agreed it was important to keep a downtown transfer area, but directed staff to bring back additional location and design options, including an option that would maintain the transfer location in its current location in the 700 block of Vermont Street and potentially make traffic one-way on that block to accommodate improvements.

The options for the new location of the downtown bus transfer area include city-owned parallel parking areas and parking lots downtown. Commissioner Jennifer Ananda said that while the option recommended to the commission may not have been ideal, the commission would likely get pushback from downtown business owners regardless of the location.

“I think that part of the reason that this whole conversation has taken as much time as it has and we’ve done as many studies as we have is that everyone holds their space downtown very closely, and understandably so,” Ananda said. “And I hear, ‘transit is important but not in my space,’ and I think that that’s an experience we’re going to have no matter where we propose this to be.”

The city has budgeted $9.2 million for the new bus station and the downtown transfer area. The city and the University of Kansas coordinate their bus routes, and after pushback from neighborhoods regarding other locations, the City Commission settled in 2019 on locating the bus station on KU property on the southeast corner of Bob Billings Parkway and Crestline Drive.

Potential sites for the downtown transfer area presented Tuesday included city-owned parking lots in the 800 block of Vermont Street, the 1000 block of Vermont Street and the 800 block of New Hampshire Street. The consultant-recommended option, option 1A, would be located in the 800 block of Vermont Street and would eliminate one of the four rows of angled parking in the lot and a row of on-street parallel parking, for a net loss of 40 parking spaces. The recommended design is the least expensive of the options and is estimated to cost $1.8 million.

Several downtown business owners, particularly those in the 800 block of Vermont Street or nearby, said that they supported public transit but spoke in opposition to the recommendation, largely because of the loss of parking spaces that they said were highly utilized. Other members of the public who spoke at the meeting expressed support for the recommended location, with several noting that there is ample parking available in the parking garage located in the 700 block of Vermont Street.

Sally Zogry, executive director of Downtown Lawrence Inc., said that the members of the group opposed the proposed location. Zogry said she was not there to debate whether a downtown transfer area was needed, but that the 800 block of Vermont Street was a busy location for businesses and what was needed were better, more creative options.

“This is a very big decision that we’re making and it makes a huge impact, so I would like us to go back to the drawing board,” Zogry said. “We were only given three poor choices.”

Representatives of the Sustainability Action Network, the Public Transit Advisory Board and some Lawrence residents spoke in favor of the recommended option. In addition to noting the nearby parking garage, many said the central location and improvement to the transfer area would serve transit users — who are also downtown visitors — well and improve the transit system.

Jacob Arnold, a bus driver for the city’s service, said that the current location is somewhat unsafe, as it is difficult to maneuver buses in the space and people cross in the middle of the street. Arnold said bus riders were also downtown customers.

“The reality is you have a lot of people here who do not ride the bus, who do not need the bus per se themselves, talking about how we don’t need the bus for people who are less fortunate, for people who don’t have the ability to get around town,” Arnold said. “The buses bring locals as well as students downtown to spend money and to have fun in our town.”

Following the commission’s vote Tuesday, the design of the main bus station will move forward while additional options for the downtown transfer area will come back to the commission at a later date.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the name of the bus driver.