photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A portion of E. 902 Road, north of Rock Chalk Park and the LMH Health West complex, is shown on April 7, 2025.

Developing the area just north of Rock Chalk Park has, at times, looked like the middle-age, full-court pick-up basketball games that take place at the adjacent sports center — slow moving with more plans than points.

Now, there is a development hoping to break the drought. Plans have been filed for a multimillion dollar project to build about 100,000 square feet of self-storage units that would be north of the sports center and visible from nearby Kansas Highway 10.

While self storage units aren’t usually known for their drama (unless you find yourself on an episode of Storage Wars) it isn’t a slam dunk that this project will win approval.

Questions about a 156-year old road may play into its future.

Before we get too far, you may want a reminder of the location. Rock Chalk Park, of course is just north of Sixth Street and George Williams Way in northwest Lawrence. Immediately north of the KU sports fields and the City of Lawrence recreation center is a network of trails on city-owned land. But north of that is hundreds of acres of rolling grassland and timber.

While the area immediately east of Rock Chalk Park has been a popular spot for new single family homes and apartments, none of that has occurred north of the sports complex. Part of the reason likely has to do with the property to the north being in the Perry-Lecompton school district, meaning school-age children in any new homes there wouldn’t be eligible to attend Lawrence public schools. That’s true for some of the new apartments to the east, though.

A bigger issue likely has to do with the difficulty of getting to the property. It is served by just one road — E. 902 Road — and it very much is a traditional country, gravel road. The road has been in existence since 1869, and has been a dead-end road for its entire history, according to a memo recently written by County Engineer Chad Voigt.

The self storage facility — proposed by Lawrence-based Garber Enterprises — would be located near the dead end of the road.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A site north of Rock Chalk Park proposed for a self-storage facility is pictured on April 7, 2025.

The project, however, almost hit a roadblock before it ever got started. The county engineer last month asked Douglas County commissioners to place a new traffic limit of 50 cars per day on E. 902 Road. While no one would actually be out there counting traffic, the limit would be used when determining whether new development should be allowed along the road.

The site plan for the storage unit facility already had been filed with the county when Voigt wrote his memo asking commissioners to limit traffic on the road. David Hamby, a private engineer working for the developer of the storage unit project, said he was caught by surprise that the county engineer was proposing the traffic limit. After raising some concerns, county commissioners ultimately didn’t take any action on the request for a traffic limit. Since the idea wasn’t officially rejected, whether it will come back again is unclear.

The county engineer said in his memo that a traffic cap was appropriate because Kanwaka Township officials already have difficulty in maintaining the road. The township would have to drive a road grader on about 2.5 miles of city street in order to get to E. 902 Road to maintain it. That is already the case today, but the idea of a self-storage facility being located on the road would likely increase the amount of traffic on the road, and thus increase the number of times the township would need to maintain it.

Also likely to increase is the amount of taxes the Kanwaka Township would receive from the property. While not addressed in the memo, the storage facility likely would pay more than $10,000 a year in taxes to Kanwaka Township, based upon the tax value of other large storage unit projects in the county.

The memo to county commissioners suggested the storage unit project should be annexed into the city limits of Lawrence, which would likely involve spending millions to convert E. 902 Road, which is about a half mile in length, into a traditional, paved city street.

But Hamby said the developer is not proceeding down that path. Importantly, the county already approved light-industrial zoning for the site in question, which gives the property some rights to be developed without being annexed into the city.

That’s where the project — which proposes six buildings that each are about 400 feet long, an office and small parking lot — stands currently. It is being administratively reviewed for approval under the county’s development standards.

A project that would be required to be in the city limits, Hamby said, is if Garber wants to develop any of the other property he owns north of Rock Chalk Park into traditional single family homes. As we’ve reported, Garber has pursued those plans too. Hamby said the city has agreed to extend the city limits to the area, and approved plans for single family construction there.

But Hamby said such a housing project isn’t imminent, even as Lawrence faces a tight supply of new homes. He said the cost for the developer to improve E. 902 Road to the required city street standards makes it infeasible to move forward with the housing project, which likely could accommodate around 200 to 300 homes under current city zoning regulations. Hamby said that project likely won’t move forward, unless the city decides it is willing to spend money to improve the road to spur housing development.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The Rock Chalk Park complex and Kansas Highway 10 are shown on April 7, 2025.