photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The intersection of N 1700 Road and E 1000 Road, known as Queens Road inside the Lawrence city limits, is pictured on Dec. 29, 2025.

Lawrence’s city limits may expand to the northwest to allow for a large new housing development. Plans have been filed at City Hall to convert a gravel road on the outskirts of town into a new city street that would lead to nearly 200 new homes.

The plans are for the area just north of where Queens Road ends and the gravel township road known as E 1000 Road begins. Multiple applications have been filed at City Hall to annex 61 acres of property at the northeast corner of E 1000 Road and N 1700 Road, and then rezone the land to a mix of residential and open space development.

The property currently is zoned for agricultural uses, and includes one rural homestead on the site. If you are having a hard time picturing the location, Queens Road is the city street that is between Stoneridge Drive and Congressional Drive on Sixth Street. (For those of you still in holiday shopping mode, Queens Road is about a quarter-mile west of where you perhaps left your wallet, aka the west Lawrence Walmart store.) The proposed housing development would be about one mile north of Sixth Street.

Specific plans for the housing development haven’t been filed yet. However, Lawrence-based Landplan Engineering did file a “concept plan” with the rezoning requests. That concept plan shows 175 new building lots and six new city streets being constructed on the property.

photo by: Landplan Engineering/City of Lawrence

A concept plan for a housing development at intersection of Queens Road and N 1700 Road in northwest Lawrence is shown.

If that plan were ultimately constructed, it appears it would provide at least 189 new homes. The concept plan calls for 161 single-family home sites and 14 lots would accommodate duplexes, meaning there would be two homes on each lot.

Theoretically, there could even be more living units than that on the property because Lawrence’s new zoning code makes it easier to build duplex units on a wide range of zoning categories. In addition to the annexation requests, the documents filed at City Hall also are seeking to rezone most of the property to R2 residential zoning, which allows for duplex or singe family construction. A smaller section of the property — about two dozen lots — are seeking R1 zoning, which is a less intense residential zoning category but also allows for duplex construction under the new code.

Details about who plans to develop the property are not clear in the application materials. The owner of the property is listed on the application as the current homeowner, Deane Holmes, Jr.. I’m not sure that the current property owner is slated to be the developer of the new neighborhood. Upon visiting the site, I noticed there is a “for sale” sign on the property, so I’m not sure whether the property may be under contract by another party, or if the annexation and rezoning requests have been submitted on a speculative basis. I’ve got a message into a representative with Landplan Engineering, which is designing the project, to try to get some additional information.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Vacant agricultural land at the intersection of N. 1700 Road and Queens Road is shown on Dec. 29, 2025.

The fact that the property is getting strong interest as a site for new home construction shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. For one thing, it fits with one of the major themes of the recent City Commission elections. Both the winning candidates talked extensively about the need for Lawrence to begin building more homes in an effort to address housing affordability issues.

There already has been a lot of movement on that front since the November elections. This project would be one of the biggest in years for new single family construction in Lawrence. However, it would be dwarfed by a potential project we reported on earlier this month. Wichita businessman Phil Bundy is seeking to annex about 800 acres west of Bob Billings Parkway and the South Lawrence Trafficway. He wants to develop about 700 of those acres with new residential development.

That area west of the SLT has long been seen as the most likely area that could accommodate several thousand news homes over the next decade. This Queens Road proposal, however, serves as a reminder that there are other significant areas in or near the city limits that also might be ripe for residential development. Property sites along Queens Road are likely getting more interest now that the city has completed the final improvements of the city street.

For many years, the portion of Queens Road just north of Sixth Street was best used by people who had a hobby of replacing shocks and struts, as the street was a thinly-paved road that couldn’t handle the traffic it was receiving. But now the section of road is a fully improved city street, which has made it easier for developers to consider housing developments that would use Queens Road as a main entrance and exit.

Indeed, in November we reported that the Omaha-based development group Metonic had filed plans with City Hall to build 125 units of luxury apartments at the northeast corner of Queens Road and Wakarusa Drive. This latest Queens Road development is about a quarter mile north of that proposed apartment site.

What will be interesting to watch in the years to come is how far north the city chooses to develop along Queens Road. The road — a bit curvy, hilly and graveled in parts — already goes all the way to Interstate 70 and actually has a bridge that goes over the turnpike. That’s notable because there is a fairly significant amount of open land directly east of Queens Road and just south of I-70. Much of that land is owned by a relatively small number of people, including some who are already in the development industry.

As for the proposed Queens Road development, it will have to win a series of approvals from both the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission and the Lawrence City Commission before it can move forward. As is often the case with annexation requests, the city will have to calculate how much it will cost to add the land to the city, with expenses such as street improvements and utility line extensions to consider. The specifics of those extensions and improvements will dictate whether the city at large pays for those improvements or whether the developer must cover those costs.

photo by: Douglas County GIS/Journal-World

The blue start shows the site of a proposed housing development along Queens Road, also known as E. 1000 Road.