photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Jeff DeWitt, KU's chief financial officer, speaks to the Lawrence City Commission on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026.

After reaffirming how important they thought KU’s Gateway project was for Lawrence and the university, city commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize issuing up to $100 million in STAR and Community Improvement District bonds for its second phase.

The Gateway project, a multi-use development associated with KU’s new football stadium, already has a convention center and will include a hotel, student housing, retail space, an outdoor plaza and more when it’s finished. And Mayor Brad Finkeldei said it was one of the things he was most proud to have been a part of while on the City Commission.

“In the long run, a really high-functioning convention center could do as much for us as Costco can,” Finkeldei said, referring to the mega-store that opened in west Lawrence just last week.

But the Gateway will need a hotel to succeed, he and KU leaders both said on Tuesday, and that hotel will be part of the project’s second phase.

To keep the project running on schedule, KU asked the commissioners to go ahead and authorize the two bond issuances – up to $75 million in STAR bonds, and up to $25 million in Community Improvement District bonds – even though a guaranteed maximum price had not yet been locked in for the hotel. The commission approved a related resolution last month that would let the city hold proceeds associated with the hotel in escrow “until certain conditions relating to the Hotel’s construction and/or opening are provided to the City Manager’s satisfaction.”

The bonds’ repayment would come from tax revenues generated by the Gateway project. The STAR bonds allow the project to capture new sales tax revenues, including state sales taxes, and the CID will create a new 2% special sales tax within its boundaries.

Commissioner Kristine Polian asked, to clarify for the public, whether the city would be on the hook for any of the bonds “if for some reason revenues aren’t coming in,” and Kevin Wempe of Gilmore and Bell, the city’s bond counsel, said the city wouldn’t be.

Polian also asked about what kinds of events the Gateway would host other than football. Jeff DeWitt, KU’s chief financial officer, said it would be used for conferences, concerts, parties, movie nights, and that it wouldn’t just be for KU events, but for the community.

“This is a multi-purpose facility that we lease to the football team to play in,” he said. “… It is meant to do all those other things.”

KU’s representatives told the commission that there had already been around 300 events at the convention center, though many of them were smaller, and KU has not yet been able to bring in very large conferences.

DeWitt said the hotel space would be a big part of that. He said KU was continuing its discussions on the roughly 150-room hotel, which he projected could open by the end of 2028. When Vice Mayor Mike Courtney asked him how much hotel space the city would need to host bigger conventions and events, DeWitt said that there would probably be a demand for more space off campus that doesn’t currently exist.

“I won’t be surprised if there’s another hotel developer coming to you in the near future,” DeWitt told the commission, adding that KU wasn’t planning to add another one on its campus.

Some people spoke to the commission with concerns about the impact of the CID and its associated tax on KU students living in the district. Angel Rivera, a Student Senate representative, said he recognized the project was an investment in KU, but that Student Senate had questions about transparency and whether KU had listened to its students’ concerns.

Commissioner Amber Sellers, a KU alumna, said that she originally voted against the creation of the CID because she worried that students would be “double-taxed.” She and Courtney both urged KU to work to find some way to minimize the impact on students.

Before the vote, Finkeldei said that he’d long been a fan of the Gateway project. “I supported it in the past, I support it now,” he said.

And Polian said that it wouldn’t be right to let the project fail at this stage.

“I’m excited,” Polian said. “I really want it to be successful, and I’d love to see these bonds get paid off in half the time.”