photo by: Screenshot

This rendering of an Aldi grocery store proposed for Sixth Street and George Williams Way was shared with the city's Board of Zoning Appeals by Landplan Engineering on May 7, 2026.

A new Aldi store proposed for northwest Lawrence has hit a setback with city planners – namely, that it’s set back too far from the street.

The grocery store project has been proposed for the northeast corner of Sixth Street and George Williams Way, and its developers had wanted the store to be farther away from the western edge of the property to alleviate problems caused by the sloping terrain. But that bumped against the city’s new Land Development Code, which imposes a maximum setback distance that wasn’t in the old code.

Last week, Lawrence’s Board of Zoning Appeals voted 5-0 against the developers’ request to depart from that rule, and while city staff says that doesn’t necessarily mean the project is dead, it’s not clear where it stands now.

The setback that Aldi’s developers were requesting would have put the building 220 feet off of George Williams Way, with its parking lot in between the building and the street.

Under the city’s previous Land Development Code, this would not have been a problem, because the “mixed corridor” zoning district that Aldi wants to locate in only had setback rules to prevent buildings from getting too close to the street. But the new code, which went into effect in April 2025, added a maximum setback requirement for this district, which would prevent buildings from being more than 25 feet away from the street.

Landplan Engineering’s Corby Rust, who is part of the development team, told the Board of Zoning Appeals on May 7 that he had actually been working with this property since 2024, before the new code went into effect. He said he was “caught off guard” when he learned about the maximum setbacks.

“This was new to me, new to Lawrence,” he said, and it put the developers in a tough spot, so they requested the variance.

Planning staff had determined that the variance wouldn’t adversely affect nearby property owners or the public. But planner Luke Mortensen said it would grant the developers rights that other property owners in the area didn’t have, and that variances were intended for properties “so remarkably unique” that they couldn’t reasonably meet the standards of the code as written.

Rust argued that this property fit that description. “This property absolutely does have unique conditions,” he told the board.

He said the code meant the only place on the property that the building could locate and satisfy the setback requirements was the southwest corner, right next to the intersection of Sixth and George Williams. But that part of the property features a 3:1 slope on the west side, he said, and the fact that the site also slopes from north to south poses additional problems.

“The code requires the entire back of the building, the back of the Aldi, to be constructed on or very near this 3:1 slope,” Rust said.

Semitrailers would have problems dropping off shipments if the store were in that corner, Rust said, because one of the two possible entrances to the parking lot would have been too steep a slope for semis to enter. Putting the store in the southwest corner would require the semis to take a circuitous route through the entire parking lot, he said, which would be dangerous for pedestrians and other vehicles and reduce the amount of parking space available.

Rust said there could also be stormwater problems if the building were on the southwest corner. The natural site for a stormwater detention basin would be “right where code requires the building,” he said, and putting the building there could require underground detention systems and costly excavation and regrading work.

Daron Sinkler, a member of the appeals board, agreed that the grade of the property “does cause an issue” for the developers. “There’s only so much you can do on a sloped lot,” he said.

But the board members said they were also concerned about whether a variance would be within “the spirit and intent” of the Land Development Code, one of the criteria the board is required to weigh. Mortensen said it would not.

“It is not the intent of the code to immediately grant a variance from newly adopted standards for a property that is semi-recently annexed and totally undeveloped,” Mortensen said.

(According to planning staff’s report on the variance request, the yet-to-be-platted property was annexed into the city 25 years ago, in 2001.)

Mortensen said that the intent of the maximum setback requirement was to create spaces with “fewer expanses of surface parking lots and less open space between buildings and roads.” Rust said the developers had anticipated those concerns and had designed landscaping and a “monument”-style sign for the southwest corner of the property that would make the parking lot less visible from the street.

Mortensen also said staff’s opinion was that following the code strictly “would not constitute an unnecessary hardship” for the developers.

Ultimately, the board agreed with staff’s recommendations and voted against the larger setback.

“I don’t see that this (property) has anything unique about it other than problems that I think can be overcome,” board member Dean Palos said just before the vote. “Unfortunately, it may cost you more money, and I’m not happy about that for you, but at the same time I think what the city is trying to do is pretty straight up, it’s pretty clear, and I don’t think this meets it.”

The Board of Zoning Appeals’ decision doesn’t necessarily mean that the project can’t move forward.

During the board’s meeting, Mortensen mentioned that the Land Development Code allows for something called a “planning director waiver.” Planning manager Becky Pepper told the Journal-World via email on Thursday that during the site plan review process, the planning director is allowed to waive requirements of the code if the developer “can demonstrate that the intent of the Comprehensive Plan and the Land Development Code are fulfilled and if the development project otherwise meets sound site planning principles.”

Pepper also said that, if the developers desired, they could challenge the board’s decision in court. She said the Land Development Code states that within 30 days of a decision by the Board of Zoning Appeals, “any person aggrieved by the decision may maintain an action in District Court to determine the reasonableness of the final decision.”

The Journal-World reached out to Landplan Engineering to ask about the status of the Aldi project, but had not received a response as of 2 p.m. Thursday.

As the Journal-World has reported, Aldi is not a new grocery chain in Lawrence; it currently has a location at 3025 Iowa St. The proposed Sixth and George Williams Way location would be just across the street from the Mercato development and discount retailer Costco, which received its building permit from the city last week.