photo by: Herron + Partners architects/City of Lawrence

A rendering shows the proposed design for a Q39 barbecue restaurant in downtown Lawrence.

City commissioners will hold a public hearing Tuesday night to discuss a request for tax incentives for the Q39 restaurant project in downtown Lawrence.

The plans to bring the popular Kansas City barbecue restaurant to Lawrence have been around for more than a year, but the future of the actual project at 639 New Hampshire St., the site of the former Journal-World printing plant, has become uncertain. The development group now says it needs financial incentives for the project to be viable.

(Note: The Journal-World has no ownership or involvement in the project.)

Originally, the restaurant was slated to be part of a larger development that would have renovated the entire printing plant complex to add high-end office space, a food hall and an open-air plaza. But in October, one of the developers involved in the project let its option to purchase the plant expire, stalling the larger development plan.

Now, without the larger development, Q39’s developers say they need a special tax district and industrial revenue bonds to continue moving forward. The incentives package that Q39 wants would create a new taxing district that would add 2% to the sales tax rate for all food and beverages purchased at the restaurant and would allow the development to save more than $160,000 by exempting it from paying sales taxes on construction materials.

City commissioners considered that incentive package during a meeting in February, but voted to defer the item. Since then, further development has been on hold.

A city-hired consultant has conducted a study of whether Q39 actually needs the incentive package to be financially viable. The firm, Baker Tilly, found that without the incentive package, the project would lose money. With the incentive package, the project is projected to have a rate of return of about 4.8%, which Baker Tilly said is still below the 6% to 11% rate of return that most restaurant real estate projects expect.

According to a city memo, the project would be expected to add $7 million in private investment and support 88 new permanent jobs in Lawrence, including eight managerial positions. The memo also said the project has the potential to “catalyze redevelopment” in the 600 blocks of New Hampshire and Massachusetts streets, where many of the surrounding properties have “experienced prolonged vacancies.”

In other business, commissioners will:

• Consider a rezoning request and preliminary development plan for an affordable housing development along Tennessee Street.

The proposal would rezone about 0.26 acres of land on 909 and 913 Tennessee St. and approve a request to reduce the amount of required off-street parking to replace it with a three-story residential building that will have six units for temporary supportive housing.

The proposal was put forward by the Ninth Street Missionary Baptist Church Hope Project, which has a four-unit building at 913 Tennessee St. that serves the same purpose.

The proposal was unanimously recommended for approval by both the Historic Resources Commission and the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission. The project received $300,000 from the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund in 2024, as the Journal-World reported.

• Consider a request to rezone a residential area in west Lawrence to allow for small-scale commercial development near a proposed affordable housing project.

The rezoning would change approximately one acre of land on the southeast corner of K-10 and Bob Billings Parkway from residential to mixed-use zoning as part of a larger redevelopment project in the area. That project is from Tenants to Homeowners, a local community land trust that works to provide affordable housing. It would construct 120 units of affordable housing on 14 acres of vacant land.

The housing development, for which the City Commission approved the zoning on April 1, would include a variety of housing options: multi-story apartment buildings, row-house-style buildings and duplexes.

This rezoning request, which the Planning Commission recommended for approval in March, would allow “neighborhood-scale commercial uses” in the northern portion of the project, according to a city memo. There are no specific plans yet for that type of development, but Rebecca Buford, the executive director of Tenants to Homeowners, told the Planning Commission in February that the idea was to add a coffee shop or similar amenity there.

The Tenants to Homeowners project received $1.3 million from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund in 2024, as the Journal-World reported.

Both the requests on Tennessee Street and the request in west Lawrence are on the commission’s consent agenda, a group of items usually considered routine that can be voted on all at once. However, these requests are also what are called “quasi-judicial items,” meaning members of the public are able to remove them item for a separate vote if desired.

The Lawrence City Commission will convene at 5 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. A livestream of the meeting can be viewed on the city’s YouTube channel.