photo by: Bremen Keasey

A photo taken in July 2025 of a parking lot near the corner of Ninth and Delaware Streets in eastern Lawrence that is the site of a proposed loft development project. Commissioners will consider Tuesday night ways to allocate $80,000 for the 9 Del II Lofts project that could boost its application to receive state tax credits for affordable housing.

Lawrence city commissioners on Tuesday will discuss potential funding options to assist development of an affordable housing project in East Lawrence’s Warehouse Arts District.

Commissioners will consider a variety of funding ways to allow for the waiving of certain development fees totalling $80,000 for the 9 Del Lofts II affordable housing development at 716 E. Ninth St. The proposed development would include six live-work units and 36 one-bedroom units, with a minimum of 24 of those one-bedroom units to be set aside as affordable housing.

The developer, Tony Krsnich of Flint Hills Holding Group, had previously requested $80,000 from the Affordable Housing Advisory Board to make it easier for the development to get low-income housing tax credits, but the board did not fund that project when deciding which projects would receive grants from the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund in 2026, as the Journal-World reported.

During the last City Commission meeting, Krsnich told commissioners that receiving the fee waivers would be critical in the project receiving state low income tax credit funding. As the Journal-World reported, Gov. Laura Kelly signed in April a bill that eliminates, after 2025, a 4% tax credit that has been used by many projects in Lawrence and placed a cap of $8.8 million in tax credits that can be issued in total for Kansas affordable housing projects in any given year. Those changes have made scoring more points in the state’s awarding criteria more important to get funding and means a lot more competition.

Krsnich said that receiving the $80,000 would be a 10 point difference in the rubric, which could make the difference for the 9 Del Lofts II project coming to fruition as funding for affordable housing will be more scarce.

“It’s kind of now or never,” Krsnich said.

During the last meeting, commissioners requested that city staff explore options to make that funding possible. According to a city memo, some of the options to fund the fee waiver could be through the Planning and Development Services department or the fund balance of the Affordable Housing Sales Tax.

The memo notes that the planning department “is extremely limited” in what could be cut from the department because of past cuts. The department said that it could double planning fees, but that would bring in an estimated $30,000 to $40,000 in extra revenue and increasing fees at that rate would “outpace fees” compared to peer cities. The department said it could suspend or cease three different programs that could potentially make $71,000 available.

Another possibility would be to use the fund balance of the Affordable Housing Sales Tax Fund, which is supported by a local sales tax measure. Currently, the balance sits at $261,650, with the memo noting those funds were “previously designated and allocated to the Homeless Solutions Division.”

The project has already received a lot of local support. The City Commission voted unanimously in June to approve a tax incentives plan for the project that included issuing industrial revenue bonds for a sales tax exemption on construction cost and a 95% Neighborhood Revitalization Act property tax abatement over 15 years on the valuation increase resulting from the development, as the Journal-World reported. The County Commission and School Board also approved the plan as well. The project has received other financial support previously, including $450,000 from the City’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund in 2025, as the Journal-World reported.

The City Commission will meet Tuesday night at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St.