photo by: Sporting Kaw Valley

A rendering shows an indoor soccer pitch that would be part of a new complex for Sporting Kaw Valley.

A plan to build a new soccer/sports complex at the U.S. Highway 59 and South Lawrence Trafficway interchange won’t have a preliminary vote at Lawrence City Hall on Tuesday, as once scheduled.

But the delay isn’t a sign that the project has encountered approval difficulty, a representative of the development group said Monday. Instead, the delay is a procedural one requested by Lawrence’s new mayor.

The item that was scheduled for approval at Tuesday’s meeting was a comprehensive plan amendment that would change a land use map in the comprehensive plan to show a broader range of commercial uses that would be suitable for the U.S. 59 and SLT intersection.

The range of uses listed on the map currently doesn’t anticipate a sports complex for the site. As the Journal-World reported on Wednesday, Wichita developer Phil Bundy and Lawerence-based nonprofit Sporting Kaw Valley are partnering to propose a $50 million soccer and sports complex that would include six outdoor, artificial turf soccer fields, a full-size indoor soccer field, and a fieldhouse with six basketball courts that also could be used for volleyball meets. Surrounding the nearly 40-acre complex would be a couple of hotels, several restaurants, a few retailers and potentially another unique entertainment-style business that hasn’t yet committed to the project.

City commissioners were being asked to make the comprehensive plan change at Tuesday’s meeting, but now the request likely will wait until at least February, Phil Struble, a Lawrence engineer who is representing the Wichita-development group behind the project, said.

Struble, president and CEO of Lawrence-based Landplan Engineering, said new Lawrence Mayor Brad Finkeldei asked that the developers consider presenting the comprehensive plan amendment at the same time the City Commission will consider a rezoning request and preliminary plat for the project. Those items likely won’t be to the City Commission until February, Struble has said.

Struble said his understanding of the delay was that it simply was based on efficiency of allowing the City Commission to hear all the items at one time rather than the issue taking up agenda time at multiple meetings.

Struble said the delay was not a sign that developers were changing the plans from what has been previously announced, nor was it a sign that city officials had a new set of questions about the concept.

However, Struble said he expects the delay at Lawrence City Hall also will result in the Douglas County Commission not hearing the request at its Wednesday meeting, although it remained on the county’s agenda as of Monday morning. Struble said the county’s practice has been to let the City Commission hear such requests first, if the project that has spurred the request is located inside the city limits.

The comprehensive plan amendment has to be heard by both the city and the county because the two governments have a joint comprehensive plan that guides growth both in Lawrence and in the rural areas of the county. The Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission also was required to hear the plan amendment, which it approved on a 5-3 vote in October.

A hearing on the amendment to the plan is a required step in the approval process, but approval of the amendment itself is not required for the project to proceed. Since the proposed project is entirely in the Lawrence city limits, the Lawrence City Commission will be the body responsible for approving the zoning and the plat for the development. Both of those approvals are required in order for the project to proceed.

The City Commission, however, could choose to consider those rezoning and plat requests even if the Douglas County Commission denied the comprehensive plan amendment. That scenario has happened in the past with this very property. A previous plan for this interchange also required a comprehensive plan amendment to specify that the site was suitable for a range of commercial and residential uses. County commissioners voted against the plan amendment, expressing concerns the property is too flood-prone for extensive development.

City commissioners, however, approved the rezoning requests in that case despite the plan amendment being opposed by county commissioners. The city-county planning staff has said that a comprehensive plan amendment is desirable and a good planning practice, but have noted that it is not a legal requirement for a project to proceed.