photo by: Submitted photo/Lloyd Hetrick

Lawrence Municipal Airport is pictured in this aerial photo from summer 2019.

The KU Endowment Association is seeking to annex nearly 140 acres of land it owns next door to Lawrence’s airport, seemingly to explore whether the property could accommodate future business development.

Lawrence City Hall this week received an annexation request for 136.9 acres of property that is immediately east of the runway of the Lawrence Regional Airport. However, the annexation request — which is a technical term for adding the property to the city limits — contains no other information about what KU Endowment wants to do with the land once it becomes part of the city.

Information in the Lawrence development community about the project is currently sparse, but my impression is that KU Endowment has had some entity express preliminary interest in considering Lawrence for a project. Whether that project involves aviation, manufacturing, research or something else, I don’t know. Thus far, I haven’t heard anything that leads me to believe that the interest is from a data center company. I’ve been asking around specifically about that because there are multiple data center projects planned for nearby De Soto and also for locations near Kansas City on the I-70 corridor.

KU Endowment, however, provided few clues about what it has in mind.

“We’re still in the exploratory phase, but with the airport’s new regional designation, this is the right time to think proactively about what comes next for a site with such significant long-term potential,” J. Taylor, KU Endowment’s assistant vice president of property, said via email. “Positioned at the intersection of a major research institution, Interstate 70 and a regional airport, the property offers a unique opportunity to consider future uses that can attract investment, support innovation and strengthen the area’s economic momentum. We believe it’s important to thoughtfully evaluate the site’s current use and the strategic value of this location.”

photo by: City of Lawrence/KU Endowment

The blue shaded area shows property near the Lawrence Regional Airport that KU Endowment seeks to annex into the Lawrence city limits.

Not only the user of the property but also the location of the property will ensure many members of the public have questions about the annexation request. The location is currently prime farmland in the Kansas River valley. Additionally, while the Lawrence Regional Airport is technically in the Lawrence city limits, it doesn’t have the standard water and sewer utility service that exists elsewhere in the city. That’s because the airport is more than a mile outside the main body of the Lawrence city limits.

Extending full water and sewer service to both the airport and the KU Endowment property likely would cost several million dollars.

The other issue that exists with the property and the surrounding area is flooding, and that historically has been an issue that city officials have said requires a multimillion dollar solution before development can happen in the Kansas River valley.

The city back in 2005 approved the North Lawrence Drainage Study, which came with a recommendation that significant new development should not occur in the area north of North Lawrence until a large pump station could be constructed near the intersection of U.S. Highway 24/40, also commonly called the TeePee Junction.

The pump station would take stormwater runoff from new development and pump it directly into the Kansas River, bypassing the city’s stormwater collection system that exists in North Lawrence. The 2005 study found the city’s stormwater system in North Lawrence was at capacity. If new development funneled water into the city’s stormwater system, there was a high risk that flooding would become severe in North Lawrence, the report found.

A key finding of the report was that the required pump station would cost about $11 million. That was the estimate in 2005, and current day construction costs would be several million dollars more, engineers have previously estimated.

The study hasn’t been universally loved because some have argued it is a dramatic departure from how the city requires stormwater runoff to be addressed elsewhere. It is common for development elsewhere in the city to build detention basins — basically low-lying areas that are dry except during rainstorms — to hold the water and slowly release it.

The study, though, said such detention basins by themselves were not adequate in the river valley, in part, because river valley property always has large amounts of water just beneath its surface. As a result, basins fill up with water too quickly to prevent stormwater flooding.

That thought has largely been the policy of the city and the county for a couple of decades, and the Kansas River valley largely has not seen significant development. That’s despite the area catching the eye of industrial developers, who like the combination of flat land and easy access to U.S. Interstate 70. The need for a multi-million pump has generally caused developers to scuttle any plans.

But the proposal from KU Endowment comes at an interesting time. While Douglas County officials have consistently said the multi-million dollar pump is needed before development can happen north of North Lawrence, they took a different approach after receiving the application for the Kansas Sky Energy Center. That industrial solar project would add about 8 million square feet of solar panels to the Kansas River valley, creating stormwater runoff in the process.

The county, however, approved the project without requiring construction of the recommended pump. Instead, county officials said they were confident detention basins could adequately control the stormwater runoff from the project. Importantly, the city of Lawrence has not objected to that idea.

That lack of objection has created the question of whether city officials now believe that significant development can occur in the Kansas River valley without the recommended pump.

Depending on what other details emerge about the KU Endowment project, it could become a test of the city’s position on the issue.

Other issues, though, also could come into play. For one, stormwater issues are a subject of a lawsuit filed by Grant Township and neighbors of the proposed solar plant. A ruling by the court — not expected until at least next year –could impact certain stormwater issues in the valley in the future.

The annexation request also will have to go through public hearings at the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission and the Lawrence City Commission before it could proceed. Dates for those hearings haven’t been set.