photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A piece of pasture land proposed for industrial zoning at the southeast corner of East 900 Road and North 1800 Road is shown in February 2025. The Kansas Turnpike is visible in the background.

On the one hand, the project is pretty straightforward: A landscape company wants to be able to locate its shop and its offices in one location.

But that location makes the project more interesting than your typical landscaping venture. That location is right along the Kansas Turnpike — just east of the Lecompton interchange — which is an area economic development leaders have long eyed as an area that could support a new wave of warehouses or other industrial projects.

You may recall that I reported in early February that plans had been filed to rezone the pasture land at the southeast corner of East 900 Road and North 1800 Road to a light industrial zoning category. At the time, though, it wasn’t clear what project was interested in locating on the 18-acre site.

Now, it is. Lawrence-based Turformance Lawn Services wants to build an approximately 12,000 square foot building on the site to house the landscaping company’s shop and office operations, owner Dallien Holtkamp told me.

photo by: Lawrence-Douglas County planning office

A concept plan shows a possible use for property near the intersection of E 900 Road and N 1800 Road northwest of Lawrence.

The project won a key vote last week when the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission recommended approval of the rezoning request. But the Douglas County Commission will have the final say on the rezoning request in the coming weeks, and county commissioners will be considering a less than unanimous recommendation from the Planning Commission.

Planning commissioners recommended the project on a 7-3 vote, with those in opposition expressing concern that the landscaping project — while fine on its own merits — may open the door to a whole host of companies that will seek similar rezonings because they want to be next to an interchange on the Kansas Turnpike.

Planning Commissioner Charlie Thomas voted against the project at the Feb. 24 Planning Commission meeting while questioning whether the rezoning “would throw the door open” to about “50 other uses” that may want to locate in the area in the future.

That has long been the concern anytime the idea of industrial development has been broached for the area near the Lecompton interchange. The area is still very much rural, as it is about two miles outside the current Lawrence city limits. It does have one major warehouse — for Berry Plastics — but it was no small political feat for that project to win its approvals years ago.

But at the recent Planning Commission meeting, those concerns didn’t win the day. In fact, some commissioners leaned into the idea that the area around the Lecompton interchange is destined to change.

“Is there a risk that 50 other things might come into that?” Planning Commissioner Gary Rexroad said of the area. “Given the struggle we have in this community of finding industrial ground at all, the fact that it is in our plan to go that direction, the fact that a business wants to go there, I think the plan wants 50 other things to come in there.”

The plan Rexroad was referring to was the K-10 & Farmers Turnpike Area Plan, which was updated by city and county planners in 2022. That plan shows large swaths of land around the Lecompton interchange housing a variety of industrial and commercial land uses.

photo by: Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Office

A city-county land use map for the area near the Lecompton interchange on the Kansas Turnpike is shown.

However, the plan also was built primarily with the idea that the area would first be annexed into the Lawrence city limits before that industrial and commercial development would take place. The proposal by Turformance Lawn Services doesn’t seek annexation into the Lawrence city limits. Some commissioners worried the project would set a precedent for other companies to seek industrial zoning near the interchange without first becoming a part of the city of Lawrence and all the services it offers.

“I don’t think this is the time for this location,” Planning Commissioner Jane Eldredge said at the meeting. “If we decided we are going to ignore our long range plan and our timing for annexation, I think that puts unknown pressure on the rest of that land. Once we we do this for this business, we can do it for any other business.”

Other commissioners, though, said it is fair for the timing of the plan to adjust to meet the realities of Lawrence’s real estate market. Holtkamp, the owner of Turformance, told commissioners that he had been searching for a piece of land closer to the city to build his project for about two years. He said the number of available parcels of land available for a light industrial project are few.

Some commissioners said that’s their impression too.

“I don’t know if any of you have looked at property lately,” Commissioner Michael Crawford said. “It is a little scarce. It is hard to find. I applaud you for only taking two years to find this property. I have friends who are commercial developers, and it can take five to 10 years sometimes to find anything even remotely close to what the code would allow for them to do their business.”

Douglas County commissioners at a future meeting will decide whether to approve the rezoning request.

As for Holtkamp and the landscaping business, he said he’s simply driven by a need to have a location that will allow him to have his offices in the same location as his shop. Currently his business’ offices are located inside the Lawrence city limits because the conditional use permit he has for his company’s shop space in rural Douglas County can’t be modified to allow for any offices. That means a simple task like a staff meeting becomes difficult because there’s no single location for all employees to come together.

“This is really to take care of our people better,” Holtkamp said.