photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World photo

Plans filed at Lawrence City Hall call for much of the vacant ground near the Casey's convenience store in far west Lawrence to be converted into single family homes and apartments. Previous plans had called for the property at the Bob Billings interchange on the South Lawrence Trafficway to be developed with commercial uses, but a shortage of housing lots in the city caused the property's owners to change directions.

There have been hopes by some west Lawrence residents and developers alike that a large grocery store would locate near the Bob Billings interchange on the South Lawrence Trafficway. But those hopes are dimming as owners of the property have filed plans to change the zoning on much of the vacant land from commercial to residential uses.

If you were a fan of the grocery store idea, consider it another victim of Lawrence’s extremely tight housing market. Longtime Lawrence builder Bob Santee — who leads the group that owns the land at the northeast corner of the Bob Billings interchange — said the shortage of available building lots in Lawrence caused him to shift from a commercial focus to a residential one.

“It is pretty incredible,” Santee said of Lawrence’s tight housing market. “But it also is pretty simple. There is nothing to buy and everything keeps going up.”

If you are having a hard time picturing the area, it is the vacant land that surrounds the new Casey’s convenience store that was constructed at the northwest corner of Bob Billings Parkway and Langston Way. If you haven’t been out there lately, that store is open, so don’t worry about the residents starving. (Man can live a long time on breakfast pizza and doughnuts, regardless of what my doctor tells me.)

Plans filed at City Hall call for about 7.5 acres of vacant, commercially-zoned property to be converted into residential uses. More specifically, about 5.5 acres would be converted into single-family housing, while about 2 acres would be zoned for multi-family apartment uses.

Santee said he hopes to have 24 new single family homes built on the property and about 30 rental units on the multi-family part of the property. He said said some of the homes will be smaller than what many people have come to expect in west Lawrence. That’s an effort to make the homes more affordable, but Santee said the definition of affordable housing in Lawrence often is tough to comprehend.

“We’re going to build some of the houses about as small as we think you can sell in Lawrence,” Santee said.

Those homes will be about 1,600 to 1,800 square feet. But in a sign of the times, Santee said the lumber for one of those homes will be about $30,000 more than it would have been a year ago, based on current prices. He said those smaller homes probably still would come on the market with about a $300,000 asking price.

As for the rental units, they will be smaller yet. He said current plans call for two-story, two-bedroom units with a one car garage.

“We kind of get spoiled with everything being so big in the midwest,” Santee said of housing size. “But if you want to make something affordable, smaller is often the way to do it. You can still have really high quality finishes to make it a nice product. I think you are going to see more of that.”

Don’t look for the project to provide any immediate relief to the housing market. Santee estimated he won’t have the necessary approvals from Lawrence City Hall until about March. With street, sidewalk and sewer construction still to be done, Santee estimated there will be about a year’s worth of construction to do once the project wins approval.

As for the idea of a grocery store someday coming to the area, there still will be about six acres of commercially-zoned, vacant property at the site. But that probably won’t be enough to accommodate a big grocery store, as originally envisioned.

“You could probably do a smaller one, but not the type you normally see in Lawrence,” Santee said of the grocery prospects.

Santee said the idea of commercial development at the interchange has been slow to develop. One of the reasons is because commercial developers insist there still aren’t enough houses in the area.

“Everybody just sees the fields across the highway, and they say ‘call me when you have some houses over there,'” Santee said.

Santee is referring to the large pieces of agricultural land on the west side of the South Lawrence Trafficway. I’ve heard several people in the development business say that is the most logical place for large scale housing construction in Lawrence to occur. The terrain of the property is fairly easy to work with, and unlike the area south of the Wakarusa River, there aren’t dozens upon dozens of five acre homesites that developers would have to build around. Importantly, the property is in the Lawrence school district, unlike some of the vacant ground near the SLT and Sixth Street interchange.

But Lawrence City Hall doesn’t appear to be any closer to allowing growth into that area than it was several years ago. Lawrence’s tight housing supply hasn’t been enough to spark a serious discussion at City Hall about opening up those hundreds of acres west of the SLT for new residential development.

“It will happen someday, though,” Santee said.