photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

The new Costco in west Lawrence is pictured Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026.

I think city commissioners on Tuesday night should have been pretty interested in taking the State of Kansas for about $80 million. I think they should continue to be interested in such a scheme.

Yes, a scheme. That’s basically what this decision of whether to include the soon-to-open Costco store in a STAR bond district is about. While it is difficult for a city commissioner to talk in such blunt terms in public, it is a piece of cake for a newspaper columnist.

So, let me be direct: This is all a money-grabbing game. Don’t try to put any more shine on it than that. How can I make sure I get my hands on tens of millions of dollars of state money while keeping the state’s hands off of it?

City commissioners on Tuesday unanimously agreed to not move forward with a Costco-based STAR district for a project that would create a variety of new projects in western, southern and northern Lawrence. That’s fine and understandable. The proposed project seems pretty odd. Its map looks like something drawn by a gerrymander committee. Put it to bed.

But don’t sleep on the idea of trying to grab the state’s share of the Costco money. Why? Because the city has $85 million of infrastructure projects it needs to build west of the South Lawrence Trafficway, if it intends to follow through on its vision of opening the land to thousands of new homes.

The state’s Costco dollars could make the city’s plan to fund those infrastructure projects much more feasible. Whether it is with this developer or someone new, try to come up with a simpler way to grab those dollars.

The math seems too enticing not to try. Here’s the math. Lawrence has a basic, overall sales tax rate of 9.35%. Of that, 6.5% is the state sales tax rate. That means nearly 70 cents of every dollar of sales taxes collected in Lawrence gets shipped to the State of Kansas’ bank account — unless you have created a STAR Bond district. If so, then those state dollars from the district get put in a special account local governments have some control over.

Using a very conservative estimate of $150 million a year in sales at a Lawrence Costco, the state’s portion of Costco sales taxes would easily be $4 million a year. Stretched over the 20-year life of a STAR bond district, you get to $80 million.

The game is to get that money and make sure it never leaves Lawrence. To do that under state law, you have to have a project that can attract out-of-state visitors.

Point taken if you think the projects proposed in this proposal won’t work. They — an indoor bike arena, a flight school, among others — seem really speculative. There seems to be very little real enthusiasm in the community for any of these projects.

Here’s my other thought about them: There are too many of them. Lawrence and the developers — whether it is the current set of developers or a new group in the future — need to reframe what they are trying to accomplish.

We are not trying to draw tourists to Lawrence. We are trying to build lots of new, needed housing on thousands of acres west of the South Lawrence Trafficway.

Reframe the game. Yes, we have to come up with some tourist-oriented project to check a box with the state. That tourist project should meet two requirements: 1. It should spend the minimum amount of money required to convince the state that it is a viable tourist attraction. 2. It should be located on property west of the South Lawrence Trafficway.

Point No. 2 is critical to our housing aspirations. You place the tourist attraction on the west of SLT land, and you use the STAR bond money to build roads, water lines, sewer lines, a water tower and other such infrastructure to serve that new tourist attraction.

Coincidentally, all those pieces of infrastructure also are needed to build thousands of homes west of the SLT.

That’s the game: Figure out how to use significant amounts of state dollars to do those infrastructure projects. Yes, you are going to have to spend local dollars too. The STAR bond district wouldn’t just capture the state sales tax dollars generated by Costco. It also would capture a portion of the local sales tax dollars.

Here’s the thing, though: For every $1 of local funds you are spending to build that infrastructure, you would be spending more than $2.30 of state sales tax dollars to build the infrastructure. I’m not sure you are going to get a better deal than that.

Would the state actually go for this? It might. The state has proven it doesn’t mind a STAR district including a sales tax generator that doesn’t really have anything to do with the new project. KU has proven that. The STAR bond it is receiving for its Gateway project around the football stadium uses a district that includes the entire KU campus.

In short, I’m not sure the answer is automatically “no” from the state. I could envision a scenario where even a Republican administration that doesn’t love the blue dot of Lawrence might say “yes.”

The reason: Because that administration understands Kansas needs to get more people living in the state in order to spread out our tax burden. Begrudgingly, that administration also would recognize a key fact about Lawrence: It is one of the few communities in the state predisposed to grow. Due to geography and amenities, we have an easier sell in getting people to locate here than many other communities in Kansas.

Lawrence deciding to play this STAR bond game to build more housing might actually be a welcome sign by some in Topeka. It might be seen as Lawrence finally accepting its status as a community predisposed to grow.

The biggest question around this whole STAR bond issue might be whether Lawrence really is ready to embrace that role?