photo by: EDC of Lawrence & Douglas County

Rob Richardson

Rob Richardson knows a thing or two about speed, given that a good part of his professional career has involved overseeing new development around the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas.

Richardson, who for 17 years was the director of planning for Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County, has been hired by local economic development leaders to fill the new position of “Panasonic Opportunities Manager.” That title, of course, refers to the pending $4 billion, 4,000-job Panasonic electric vehicle battery plant in nearby De Soto that is expected to create both challenges and opportunities for Lawrence and Douglas County.

It also may create the need for speed. Richardson, who began serving as KCK planning director shortly after the Kansas Speedway was constructed, doesn’t think Lawrence needs a racetrack, but some NASCAR-like quickness might be needed when it comes to the Lawrence housing market. Just four days into his new job, Richardson told me there are signs that Lawrence’s housing market already is in crisis, and it could worsen significantly if the Panasonic project attracts lots of new residents to the area.

“They probably are only going to do 75 building permits this year,” Richardson said of single-family building permits issued in Lawrence. “That doesn’t work for a community of this size.”

For comparison, Lawrence in the 1990s and 2000s routinely had more than 300 single-family building permits per year.

Richardson said such small amounts of new home construction created an extremely tight housing market that puts a lot of natural upward pressure on home prices. He said his early analysis is in line with what some in the local real estate community have been saying: Newly constructed starter homes in Lawrence may soon be at or above the $400,000 mark.

And that’s before Panasonic really starts putting pressure on the Lawrence housing market by bringing new residents to the area.

Richardson said it is not likely that Lawrence can build fast enough at this point to create a big reversal in housing prices. Instead, it needs to start building to try to prevent the situation from becoming even tougher.

“You probably can’t build yourself out of the problem, but you could build to keep it from getting real worse, real fast,” he said.

It might surprise some that thinking about housing is part of Richardson’s new job at all. He was hired by the Economic Development Corporation of Lawrence & Douglas County, which is better known as the organization that focuses on bringing new industrial businesses and other large employers to the community.

Figuring out how Lawrence and Douglas County as a whole can land some industrial projects related to the Panasonic project — suppliers to the plant are expected to create 4,000 additional jobs in the area — will be one of Richardson’s major tasks.

But the housing issue is getting a lot of attention now because leaders recognize the tight housing market has the potential to make everything else more difficult. Bonnie Lowe, who as the president of the Lawrence chamber of commerce provides management services to the EDC of Lawrence & Douglas County, said she thinks Richardson’s new position can be a champion for new ideas about how to bring housing onto the market quickly.

“I look at this as an opportunity for public-private partnerships,” Lowe said. “We need to have the land, we need investment from developers, and we need to have infrastructure. Working together we can achieve our goals.”

The fact that Richardson “speaks the language” of city and county planners is a plus. The city currently is going through a rewrite of its development code, a process that Richardson also went through as a professional planner. It can be a great opportunity to streamline some approval processes.

“There are times where the zoning process takes a long time because it is a very controversial project and it needs to take some time,” Richardson said. “But there are times when it really isn’t controversial, and it can be faster.”

Lowe said she worked to create the new Panasonic position because she believes it will be important for the community to be proactive in responding to the development. The plant will be in Johnson County, but it’s only about 20 minutes from parts of Lawrence and about five minutes from the Douglas County community of Eudora. Richardson’s position will be expected to provide assistance for the entire county, including Eudora.

While the EDC receives funding from the city and the county, the position was funded through a fundraising campaign led by members of the business community. The new position, which is operating under a two-year consulting contract, didn’t require additional funding from either the city or the county.

As for Lawrence and Douglas County’s potential to attract more jobs to the community as a result of Panasonic, Richardson said he’s still trying to quantify the potential.

“But I’m pretty confident that we are going to get a good amount of spin-off from the project,” he said.

When the community should start seeing the impact of the project is still uncertain, but some key dates are emerging. Steve Kelly, vice president of economic development for The Chamber and the EDC, said the first quarter of 2025 is the most recent estimate for the plant to be in operation.

That will mean suppliers to the plant also will need to be in a position to open by that time. Construction work to accommodate those suppliers already is evident in places. Just east of the Douglas County line on Kansas Highway 10, developers have cleared about 1.5 miles of pasture land to make way for a planned business park.

Construction on the Panasonic plant itself, which will be on a portion of the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, hasn’t yet begun. But Lowe said it is her understanding that Panasonic now has the land under contract and that Panasonic’s corporate board is expected to give the final approval for the $4 billion project this month.