photo by: Bremen Keasey

Lawrence's City Hall, located at 6 E. Sixth St., shown in June 2025.

City leaders could soon take another step toward building a new fire station in the northwest corner of Lawrence.

On its meeting agenda for Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission will get an update on the plans for the new Fire Station 6 and will consider starting the process of finding a construction manager for it.

Station 6 would be at 555 Stoneridge Drive, near the intersection of Sixth Street and the South Lawrence Trafficway. It is expected to cost $12.9 million to build and more than $4 million a year to staff and operate, and city leaders have talked about a 3-mill property tax increase for 2027 to cover the future operating costs. Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical has said it’s necessary because the department’s response times to emergencies in the far northwest of the city is greater than the four-minute standard set by the National Fire Protection Association.

What the commission will consider on Tuesday is allowing the city to use a method called “construction manager at risk” to construct the station, which differs from the normal “design-bid-build” process. In a design-bid-build project, the new building is designed first, then a competitive bid process is used to select a contractor to build it. But in construction manager at risk, a designer and a contractor are both chosen at the start based on their qualifications, and the contractor, or construction manager, provides a guaranteed maximum price for the work before it starts.

A city staff report in the meeting agenda says this method is better suited to projects that are complex and require close cooperation between the designer and the construction contractor, and the fire station would fit that description.

“Design considerations must account for efficient workflows, unique ventilation systems, specialized building systems, security requirements, and long-term durability. Early contractor involvement through (construction manager at risk) can assist in coordinating these complex elements and improving constructability,” the report says.

The report also says that having a guaranteed maximum price up front would let the city “maintain cost control.”

The city has used the construction manager at risk method before. Other building projects that have used it include the Lawrence Police Department’s headquarters, the improvement project at the Kansas River Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Municipal Services and Operations campus currently under construction.

If the commission approves the method and lets city staff start soliciting proposals for a construction manager, the design process is expected to begin this year. Construction would begin in 2027, and the station would reach “substantial completion” by November 2028 and be in operation by early 2029.

In other business, the commission will:

• Take final votes on issuing $184 million of debt for capital projects. The commission took an initial vote last month to move ahead with issuing the debt, in the form of general obligation bonds and temporary notes.

The votes on the debt are normally routine procedural steps, and many of the capital projects involved have already had been completed, but the vote in March was much more tense. Two commissioners, Kristine Polian and Mike Courtney, voted against issuing the debt, and other commissioners expressed alarm at the financial risk the city would face — lawsuits, lower bond ratings and higher interest rates in the future — if the city decided at the last minute to cancel the bond issuance.

• Receive the results of a Community Satisfaction Survey. The survey asked Lawrence residents about cost of living, economic opportunities, public safety and access to services, recreation and arts and culture, among other things.

The results show that Lawrence’s strongest area is education, arts and culture, where 84% of respondents said the city was good or excellent. The weakest area was the economy, which only 34% of respondents said was good or excellent.

• Consider allowing alcohol sales at several upcoming community events: the Free State Book Festival on May 3, the Lawrence Busker Festival from May 22 to 24, Lawrence Pride on June 7 and the Lawrence Juneteenth Celebration on June 20.

The City Commission meets at 5 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St.