photo by: Douglas County GIS

The star shows the approximate location of a planned housing development — Hunter's Hill — that would add about 150 homes along the Kansas Turnpike.

Make room in the nest, Firebirds and Jayhawks. In the world of Lawrence mascots, the Kaw — the feathered mascot of the Perry-Lecompton school district — may soon demand some space.

For several years now, Lawrence technically has been a city that has two public school districts: the Lawrence district, which covers almost the entire city, and the Perry-Lecompton district, which has territory in the growing northwest part of the city.

But don’t go searching for a Perry-Lecompton school in Lawrence. You won’t find one. But there’s reason to believe that won’t always be the case, and you can find that reason in the plans for a new Lawrence housing development along the Kansas Turnpike.

Plans have been filed for Hunter’s Hills, a housing development just south of Interstate 70 and just west of where Monterey Way would intersect with the interstate if Monterey Way went that far north. The housing development will have about 70 single-family homes in its first phase, while additional phases are expected to add about another 70 to 80 homes.

With Lawrence’s tight housing market, the new neighborhood is noteworthy by itself, but the development has an added twist. The developer, Lawrence businessman Adam Williams, has set aside more than 8 acres of land for a new school for the Perry-Lecompton school district.

The housing development is located in the Perry-Lecompton district, and there almost certainly will be students who live in the new homes that will be constructed as part of the neighborhood. Setting aside the land doesn’t mean Perry-Lecompton will build a school on the site, but it is a good reminder that the idea of Lawrence being a two-district town is becoming more real all the time.

“We certainly think they are going to need a school here,” Williams said of the Perry-Lecompton district.

J.B. Elliott, superintendent for Perry-Lecompton schools, told me he also thinks the district might need one in Lawrence at some point.

“That seems like an area that could develop fairly fast,” Elliott said. “If you have students in those new homes, you probably would need some place to expand our current schools, or have a neighborhood school.”

That doesn’t mean Perry-Lecompton has any immediate plans to build a school on the property.

“That may be something five years, 10 years, 15 years from now,” Elliott said.

Plus, in Kansas, schools don’t just decide to build a new school building. That is a project that would require a bond issue, which means voters in the school district would have to approve it.

photo by: Perry-Lecompton schools

Perry-Lecompton’s Kaw mascot is shown in this photo from the district.

So, the point of all this isn’t that Perry-Lecompton soon will have a school in the Lawrence city limits. The point is that Lawrence developers are seemingly becoming more comfortable with the idea of building Lawrence homes that will send students to the Perry-Lecompton district.

“Do I think the community is getting its head wrapped around this idea?” Williams said. “Yes, because it already is happening.”

Indeed, Elliott told me that about 35 students each day catch a bus in Lawrence and take it to the Perry-Lecompton school district. Most of those students live in The Links apartment complex near Rock Chalk Park. The fact that The Links, which isn’t particularly geared toward families, is producing 35 students already is an indication of what could happen once traditional Lawrence single-family homes start getting built in the Perry-Lecompton district.

It is not hard to imagine a couple of hundred students, and that would be a very big deal for the Perry-Lecompton district. If you are not familiar with the communities of Lecompton and Perry, they are about a 15-minute drive from the western edge of Lawrence. The district fluctuates between a 3A or 4A district, and currently has about 765 students, Elliott said.

Elliott notes that you don’t have to look very far east down Kansas Highway 10 to see how this idea of a two-district town can work. The growing community of Shawnee long has had two public school districts in its city limits. The Shawnee Mission district served the community for a long time, but as the city grew west, it entered the De Soto school district. You’ve probably heard of Mill Valley High School. (I know Free State has.) Mill Valley is a high school in the De Soto public school district.

“The community of Shawnee has just continued to grow,” Elliott said. “The model for how it can work is right there.”

(Speaking of how things work, a brief aside, since I’ve mentioned the Free State Firebirds twice in this article and haven’t yet mentioned the Lawrence High Chesty Lions, know that isn’t a slight to LHS. The Lions didn’t fit with the nest theme. Lions don’t call a nest home. They call it a buffet.)

The idea of setting aside land for a Perry-Lecompton school has kind of sprung from the City of Lawrence’s own codes. Developers now are required to show some sort of “community benefit” whenever they seek approval for a new housing development in Lawrence. That can mean donating some lots to an affordable housing program, which Williams did in this project. It can also mean setting aside some land for green space or preserving environmentally “sensitive lands,” both of which Williams also did in this development. But another possible benefit is setting aside land for public buildings, like a school.

“It would serve a real community good,” Williams said of a school.

That is the other interesting aspect of this housing development. It is one of the first to go through the city’s process since the code began requiring this “community benefit” provision. In total, the Hunter’s Hills development has set aside 22 acres of land between the green space, the sensitive lands and the school site. That’s more than a third of the 60-acre site that encompasses the entire development.

Williams told me the land that he is setting aside, would, in his opinion, be easy enough to develop with more homes, but he felt the project wouldn’t win necessary city development approvals if he didn’t set them aside under the community benefit provisions.

Williams was diplomatic about the whole issue when I talked with him. He didn’t dive too deeply into the issue, but I certainly have heard from others who believe that the community benefit provision may be creating unintended consequences. Would, for instance, the community get a greater benefit from allowing more homes to be built in a neighborhood? Real estate agents say a low inventory of new homes is a prime reason housing prices are rising in the city. A hot housing market — many homes sell in five days or fewer — is definitely impacting Lawrence home prices.

Again, Williams didn’t dive directly into that topic, but as someone who just went through the city’s process, he said more direction from the city would be welcome.

“It is not really defined what a community benefit is,” he said. “It is kind of discretionary. There are some things that need to be better defined or removed. Community benefit is one that really needs to be discussed.”

As for the homes that will be built in this new neighborhood, Williams said they likely will be a mix of styles priced between $400,000 and $700,000, with more of them closer to the lower end of the range. The development will be all single-family homes in phase one. He said he is undecided on whether future phases will include some townhome construction.

If the project wins its necessary planning approvals this winter, he hopes to break ground in the spring. Williams doesn’t plan to build the homes in the development, but rather will sell the lots to area homebuilders, he said.

photo by: Perry-Lecompton schools

The map shows how the Perry-Lecompton school district, USD 343, stretches into parts of the Lawrence city limits.