photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

Construction workers at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.

UPDATED 2:15 P.M. MAY 2

An approximately $300 million redevelopment project at KU’s football stadium has won a key recommendation from Lawrence City Manager Craig Owens, as KU and its development partners are now offering to pay nearly $20 million for other city projects.

KU or the KU Endowment Association is offering to provide the city at least $4 million worth of land to be used for affordable housing projects, and the private developer of a proposed hotel and student housing complex is offering to cover $14.5 million in city costs to improve the Ninth Street corridor and stormwater systems near the football stadium.

“This project represents a generational investment by KU, its donors, and KU Athletics in its facilities and greatly enhances the economic development contribution of KU to Lawrence,” Owens said in a memo to Lawrence city commissioners recommending that the city approve financial incentives for the redevelopment.

The new funding offer doesn’t alter KU’s promise that the stadium project won’t use general university funds. Rather, the money KU would provide for city projects would be funded by revenue created by the stadium project itself, a KU official told the Journal-World on Friday.

As reported, KU is eager to begin phase two of the Gateway project around David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium at 11th and Mississippi streets. Phase one, which included a rebuilding of the west and north ends of the football stadium and the addition of a conference/convention center to the site, is expected to be completed in August.

Phase two involves KU partnering with a private developer to construct a 162-room hotel, 443 beds of student housing, 43,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and office space, and approximately 1,000 parking spaces that will be located in a mix of underground parking garages and new surface parking lots.

KU leaders, however, have said the project is not possible unless the city of Lawrence — and ultimately the state of Kansas — agree to create several new taxing districts that will support the new development.

At their meeting on Tuesday evening, city commissioners are being asked to take some of the first steps to approve a STAR bond and a tax increment financing district for the project. The STAR bond is the largest, and would be the first time the economic development tool has been used in Lawrence. The STAR bond district would allow sales taxes that are collected at the stadium — and also at nearly all Lawrence campus locations — to be directed toward the costs of building infrastructure for the Gateway project. The STAR bond district is different from special taxing districts in that it allows the state’s share of new sales tax collections to be directed toward the project. Most taxing districts only allow the city and county’s share of new sales tax collections to be captured.

In his recommendation to city commissioners, Owens said the STAR bond district is a powerful tool because it essentially will funnel tens of millions of dollars of state money to a Lawrence project.

“The participation of the State of Kansas to dedicate its sales tax increment through the STAR Bond mechanism is substantial and expands the long term assets of the University in a way that is highly beneficial to the City of Lawrence, including its tax base and the vitality of our economy,” Owens said in the memo.

The offer by KU and KU Endowment to provide land and funds for additional city projects is a new development in the matter. In a Friday interview with the Journal-World, Heather Blanck, KU’s vice chancellor for strategic growth initiatives and real estate, said the idea of KU using funds generated by the stadium project to help pay for other city projects came up through negotiations with the city manager’s office. She said the idea fit well with KU’s overall philosophy that the Gateway project should broadly benefit the Lawrence community.

“This is an economic development project,” Blanck said. “We are trying to drive economic benefits to the city. When we sat down with the city, we started talking about whether there are opportunities for us and Lawrence as a whole to leverage this project to improve the overall environment.”

The affordable housing component fits with the city’s policies that housing projects that receive economic development incentives — the stadium project includes student housing — should also provide some element of affordable housing.

Blanck said the university and the city haven’t finalized a particular piece of land that would be provided for an affordable housing project. However, the university in a draft memorandum of understanding with the city has proposed a 19-acre site just north of Rock Chalk Park Drive and just east of Kansas Highway 10. The site is just northwest of the Rock Chalk Park sports complex.

photo by: Douglas County GIS/Journal-World

The blue star marks the site of a piece of land owned by the KU Endowment Association, which is now a possible site for an affordable housing project.

If that piece of land, which is already owned by the KU Endowment Association, isn’t deemed acceptable by the city, Blanck said KU would begin searching for other pieces of land that would be suitable.

As for the Ninth Street project, KU’s development partner would commit to help the city pay for a portion of the costs for an already-approved project to improve stormwater management in the neighborhoods near the stadium. That project also will improve the street itself, which is a key connection point between the stadium and downtown Lawrence.

KU officials have touted the Gateway project and its convention center that will include a 1,000-seat banquet hall as a major economic development driver for all of Lawrence, and particularly downtown. Business leaders in downtown have said an improved Ninth Street would make it more likely that convention-goers and other visitors to the stadium will make their way to downtown to spend money.

Under the provisions of the proposed memorandum of understanding, the hotel and student housing complex would be on the property tax rolls, since they are being developed by a private entity. However, the hotel and student housing complex would be eligible to have 100% of its property taxes rebated into a fund that could be used to pay for infrastructure related to the hotel and student housing complex. However, KU has asked its private developer to allow the city to use the first $14.5 million of rebated taxes for the Ninth Street/stormwater project.

But none of it will happen if the city and state don’t approve the new taxing districts and the economic development incentives that come with them. Blanck said none of the phase two portion of the Gateway project will occur if the incentives are denied. The project already will have large dollar amounts coming from donors and the university’s private development partner, a group led by Edgemoor Infrastructure & Real Estate, which is the entity that led the redevelopment of the Kansas City International Airport.

“We are to the point where we have extended university donors as far as we can,” Blanck said.

Tuesday’s actions by the City Commission won’t be the final votes needed for the project. The Tuesday actions merely create the districts for the STAR bond and tax increment financing districts for the project.

City commissioners, if they move the project forward on Tuesday, will be asked to take other key votes to finalize the STAR bond district in July and August, Blanck said.

A third taxing district — a Community Improvement District — that would create a new 2% special sales tax for all purchases made at the stadium and on the KU campus still must be agreed to. That item also is expected to come to the City Commission in July and August, Owens said.