photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., is pictured on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024.

Lawrence city commissioners at their meeting Tuesday will consider adopting a new Land Development Code for the city, which would govern how developments in the city are built, from lot sizes to parking requirements.

The project to update the city’s code, which has not been updated since 2006, started in 2022 and aims to establish a simpler and more consistent set of development procedures and help the city better achieve goals in its Plan 2040 strategic plan — including building more density in housing and affordable housing.

As part of the process of creating the sweeping document, the city formed a Land Development Code Update Steering Committee, which has met 18 times since August 2022, while the Planning Commission has held 17 study sessions about the development code since January 2023, according to a city memo.

The code has gone through multiple drafts and edits at each turn from the Planning Commission and steering committee, and the Planning Commission on Oct. 23 approved sending it to the City Commission on a 6-3 vote, with a few adjustments to specific wording in some sections.

Generally, many of the stated goals of the new development code have been to streamline the code to make it less confusing for developers and to allow for a more diverse housing stock by changing the regulations to make denser housing options available. As an example, tweaks to zoning rules in some neighborhoods would allow for the creation of accessory dwelling units — a secondary housing unit on a single-family residential lot — in new places where they weren’t allowed before, with the idea of creating more smaller units.

As the code has been worked on, some of the biggest points of conversation have been concerns about changes to parking and housing density.

An initial draft of the code would have removed required parking minimums and instead implemented parking maximums, as the Journal-World reported in July. The draft has since been changed to keep in minimums but with lower numbers than before.

The other concern has been how increased allowances for density might impact some mostly single-family neighborhoods, especially in areas close to the University of Kansas campus and downtown. Rule changes to allow for more housing density made some neighborhood groups express concern that the new code could create a “perfect storm” of student housing. Some residents of University Place said they were worried that rules that would encourage more multi-unit dwellings, duplexes and accessory dwelling units could cause a massive shift in the character of the neighborhood.

Jeff Crick, the city’s Planning and Development Services director, previously told the Journal-World the code works like a “living document” and will be changed and worked on to ensure it is achieving the goals of Plan 2040 and the city’s long-term strategic plan.

If the commission votes to approve the new code on Tuesday night, the city said the code would go through a period of “testing and clean-up” from December to April 2025 with the goal of looking for loopholes. Any potential tweaks found during that time period would be brought back to the Planning Commission and eventually the City Commission.

The start date if the code were passed would be April 1, 2025, with a first round of “revisions and corrections” expected to come later in the year.

In other business, the commission will consider approving a special use permit that would allow the addition of 24 Pallet shelters behind the Lawrence Community Shelter.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the Planning Commission unanimously approved the request back in October. The proposal would add the cabins, an office space and two hygiene units behind the main building at 3655 E. 25th St., increasing the shelter’s capacity from 125 people to 173. The site plan also set aside space for six additional cabins in the future.

In February, the city opened The Village at 256 N. Michigan St., which includes 50 Pallet cabins and is run by the shelter.

The cost of the project is yet to be finalized, but the shelter board asked for about $700,000 in additional funding from the city in June. A portion of that would help create the new Pallet project.