photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The intersection of Kasold Drive and Tomahawk Drive is shown on July 19, 2022. The area in the background is near the location where a new townhouse development has been proposed to locate.

Despite failing to earn a recommendation for approval from the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission earlier this fall, a development plan for the Fall Creek Villas project is still set to move forward following a vote of approval from a supermajority of city leaders Tuesday night.

At its weekly meeting, the Lawrence City Commission voted 4-1, with Commissioner Amber Sellers opposed, to approve a preliminary development plan for Fall Creek Villas, with the additional condition that a final development plan needs to return to the City Commission for approval. The final vote was taken after the Journal-World’s print deadline.

As the Journal-World reported, the plan for 14 duplexes on 8.4 acres east of Fall Creek Road and west of North Kasold Drive in west Lawrence failed to earn a recommendation from the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission in late September, as only three of the nine commissioners who voted on the project were in favor of approving it. That meant the project needed to earn approval from a supermajority of city commissioners on Tuesday, which is required whenever the City Commission wishes to act against a Planning Commission recommendation.

Neighbors to the proposed project have cited concerns with plans for the development to take place near a creek and what effect those additional homes may have on stormwater flooding in the area.

They did so again at Tuesday’s meeting, as commissioners heard roughly an hour and a half of public comments that were mostly opposed to the project. Neighbors coordinated their comments to share two different prepared presentations explaining why they felt commissioners shouldn’t let the project move forward.

But commissioners Brad Finkeldei and Lisa Larsen, Mayor Bart Littlejohn and Vice Mayor Mike Dever all said those desires needed to be balanced against the need for further housing development in Lawrence. Dever, an environmental consultant, said he visited and surveyed the project area himself to get a feel for the ecological landscape, and he wasn’t convinced that it would have as devastating an effect as some neighbors thought.

“For me, this is not some special ecosystem for the community, although it is for the neighbors and I want to honor that and respect the fact that this is in an area that is very difficult to develop,” Dever said. “But it’s not my job to tell developers where they can and cannot build. It’s my job to interpret the code and interpret the rules, and I feel like everything that was presented to me seemed like it should be, with certain considerations for the unknown considerations that have arisen today, for me I think we should move forward with these types of projects.”

Sellers, the lone vote against the project, said she didn’t have an issue with the project itself but instead with where it’s located. She and others on Tuesday night spoke a lot about infill development, the construction of buildings on previously unused or underutilized land located within an existing urban, or otherwise developed, area.

“Infill (development) can work if it’s the right project,” Sellers said. “I heard somebody say tonight, ‘Two things can be true.’ That is true, two things can be true. This would make a wonderful infill project, (but) this is not the project for that area, in my opinion. I’ve walked it; I walked it as a candidate, I’ve walked it because I live near the area and I know people who live around the area.”