photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World photo

Signs of construction work can be seen through the trees on property near Stoneridge Drive and Sixth Street in west Lawrence. Plans have been filed at City Hall to convert the former horse ranch property, which stretches to George Williams Way to the west, into a new single-family neighborhood.

Even a really talented horse trader might have a hard time swinging a deal for a new house in Lawrence, given the tight supply of new homes in the city. Perhaps a new housing development built on a former horse ranch will help. Indeed, plans for one in west Lawrence have been filed at City Hall.

A group led by Lawrence businessman Roger Johnson has filed plans to build approximately 80 homes on largely vacant property near the southeast corner of George Williams Way and Sixth Street.

“It will all be single family homes,” Johnson said, ruling out apartments or duplexes for the property. “That seems to be what is in most demand in Lawrence right now.”

The project, if approved by city commissioners, would occupy about 20 acres that stretches along the south side of Sixth Street from George Williams Way to Stoneridge Drive. For years, if you could see through the heavy woods along the road, you might have caught a glimpse of Appaloosa horses or other breeds grazing against a backdrop of new homes that kept creeping their way up the hillsides.

I interviewed the then-owner of the property, Chris Collister, back in 2008 for an article about longtime rural west Lawrence residents who were trying to figure out how to respond to a city that was knocking on their doors. In that article, Collister — whose parents had bought the homestead in the late 1960s — told me about a knock on her door at midnight. It was the police telling her that her horses had gotten loose and were running around the neighborhood. Construction crews working on those nearby neighborhoods had taken down a fence and not put it back up.

“One of the things everybody in the country knows is that if you take a fence down, you put it back up. If you open a gate, you close it,” Collister said. “What everybody calls progress has been a real pain in the rear to me.”

I liked the quote back then, and remember thinking that the pain would be over soon enough because the city would swallow that piece of property in short order. Instead, it has sat there undeveloped for about 14 years since that 2008 article.

Finding a price that Collister was willing to accept for the property probably had something to do with the long wait. But so too has a slowdown in the number of houses that Lawrence builds. When I wrote that 2008 article, Lawrence was coming off years where it routinely built 300 single-family homes a year, and sometimes topped the 400 mark.

City officials are still finalizing building permit numbers for 2021, but single-family permits will come in near 150, which is pretty typical of the past few years. Part of the reason has been that the city’s ranks of homebuilders were decimated by the Great Recession of 2009 and haven’t been rebuilt. Those that have wanted to get back into the business have had plenty of opportunity to do so in nearby Kansas City.

But another reason is that land developers have slowed their activity in Lawrence. Some of the traditional ones have died, others have decided it is too burdensome to get through the city’s zoning process, and new apartment development also has been sucking up some of the land and demand.

Johnson, who used to own Lawrence-based R.D. Johnson Excavating Company, has become one of the more active land developers in Lawrence, but he told me he is about out of any lots to sell to builders in Lawrence.

He has about 10 lots left to sell in the Cedar Grove neighborhood that he’s developed southwest of Wakarusa Drive and Harvard Road. He previously had sold all the lots he had in the Fairfield neighborhood in eastern Lawrence near 23rd Street and O’Connell Road, but recently started construction on 23 additional lots. His biggest project, prior to the west Lawrence filing, actually was in Eudora. He’s developing 40 new single family lots in the part of Eudora south of K-10 Highway.

“But if people step up and do what they say they’re going to do, all those lots are gone,” Johnson said, explaining that builders have made preliminary commitments to buy all those lots.

The new west Lawrence neighborhood — which he is naming Beth’s Ranch — would have about 80 single-family lots, with about a quarter of them being traditional 7,000-square-foot lots and the rest being smaller 5,000-square-foot homesites. The smaller lots also may have a blast-from-the-past element — alleys. The concept plan shows an alley running between the backyards of the homes, which would allow for the garages to exit onto the alley instead of the city street.

But that is just a concept plan, and the project still must win city zoning approvals. The property currently is zoned as urban reserve property, which is basically what planners designate agricultural pieces of land that are in the city limits.

If the project wins the needed city approvals, Johnson hopes to start construction in the late summer. While he won’t be the builder of the homes — his company builds the streets, sidewalks and other infrastructure — he’s expecting houses that will be in the $375,000 to $450,000 price range to fill the neighborhood.

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Johnson also is testing out one other type of living trend in Lawrence. As I’ve reported before, he’s building live-work units on the eastern edge of Lawrence. He recently completed six of the units near 23rd Street and Franklin Road.

The projects have about a 1,000-square-foot shop space/garage on the ground floor and about 1,000 square feet of living space on the second floor. Johnson is in the process of putting those units on the market, and said he’s curious to see how they will be received in Lawrence.

He said he’s already had one person interested in buying a unit to put a contractor’s office on the ground floor while living above the space. Another person has looked at putting a beauty shop on the ground floor and living on the upper floor.

The work-live concept is getting tested in other areas of Lawrence as well, with the Warehouse Arts District offering spaces for artists and others, including one couple who plan to open a wine academy.

Here’s a look at Johnson’s recently-completed live-work units.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World photo

New live work units near 23rd Street and Franklin Road in eastern Lawrence are near completion. Shown on Jan. 4, 2022, the units have 1,000 square feet of shop or garage space on the ground floor and 1,000 square feet of living space on the second floor.