The Crossing district on KU's West Campus is pictured on July 17, 2026.

The Crossing — KU’s West Campus development near the northwest corner of Clinton Parkway and Iowa Street — long has been envisioned to be a “live, work, play” district that elevates KU’s standing in the region.

Well, the work part is solidly in place. The West Campus area is buzzing with hundreds of employees each day, ranging from start-up companies at KU-affiliated incubator buildings to professors and staff at the KU School of Pharmacy and even rock-studying scientists at the Kansas Geological Survey.

If the candy aisle at a grocery store is your idea of play — maybe combined with inappropriate grocery cart maneuvers — then The Crossing began meeting the “play” part of the equation earlier this year when Dillons opened its new store in the development. Otherwise, the development also includes a pair of synthetic turf fields that can host a variety of sports.

But the “live” part of the formula hasn’t really developed (unless you count pharmacy students pulling an all-nighter.) It looks like that soon will change.

A group led by a Kansas City development firm has filed an economic development incentives request with City Hall disclosing its plans to build a more than $100 million housing complex within KU’s Crossing development. The basic description of the plan calls for 341 multi-family residential units.

The Kansas City development firm Block Real Estate Services is leading the development of the project, while also working with an entity controlled by the KU Endowment Association, which owns the land in The Crossing district.

Plans call for the housing complex to be constructed on a portion of the former park-and-ride surface parking lot that is west of the new Dillons store. The information provided to Lawrence City Hall doesn’t show specific plans for the project, but it referenced “podium style” residential development, which generally means multi-story apartment buildings with a parking garage on its lower levels. In other developments, those lower levels also include retail, restaurant or other commercial uses. The document filed with the city didn’t discuss any of those details.

Rather, the documents highlight the new living units the project will bring to the city. The documents indicated the development would be an apartment style project — rather than condos, for example. The documents also highlighted that the living units will be designed to appeal to the upper end of the Lawrence housing market. The application filed at City Hall states several times that the living units will be designed to attract faculty members, graduate students and researchers. The developers are arguing that having upper-end housing located next to the university’s research facilities is critical to KU’s ability to recruit businesses and research projects to the area.

“The Crossing supports KU’s ability to compete nationally for top faculty and graduate program recruits who evaluate quality of life and housing options when choosing between universities,” the developers wrote in the application materials filed with City Hall.

The emergence of plans for a major apartment development in the district were not unexpected. KU Endowment officials had previously disclosed that they were working with a residential developer on a project. The project likely will not be the last residential development in the district, either. As part of a development agreement with the city, KU Endowment agreed to donate 1.5 acres of property within The Crossing district to Tenants to Homeowners to use for future affordable housing projects.

The district also is certain to see more commercial development in the near future. Construction work is underway on three pad sites just north of the Dillons parking lot. KU Endowment leaders have said the pad sites are for future businesses that want to be close to the grocery store. That could include restaurants, coffee shops, dessert shops or any number of service businesses. Specific tenants for the buildings have not been announced.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A pad site in front of the Dillons store in the KU Crossing development is pictured on July 17, 2026.

The residential and commercial development, though, isn’t the biggest prize that KU leaders are seeking for the district. High-tech research firms are the big target. KU has had success in attracting a mix of start-up and established companies to its KU Innovation Park enterprise, which is a series of buildings within the district. At various times Innovation Park has attracted established companies such as Garmin and Archer Daniels Midland to the district because the companies wanted to be in close proximity to either KU researchers or their graduate students. Innovation Park also has housed a number of start-up companies that have some connection to KU research endeavors.

KU leaders now are particularly betting that they will be able to attract companies in the booming industry of national security. As the Journal-World reported, KU in 2024 received a $22 million federal grant to help build a national security research center within The Crossing district. The center, which will be adjacent to the existing Innovation Park incubator and office buildings has been going through the design phases since the grant announcement, and also has been working to land a major tenant. KU Chancellor Douglas Girod has confirmed that KU has been talking with Panasonic — which operates a $4 billion battery manufacturing plant in De Soto — about having a research center at the site.

photo by: Courtesy: KU Endowment/Douglas County

This 2022 rendering, which was part of a presentation to the Douglas County Commission, shows how the The Crossing development on KU’s West Campus could look in future years.

As for the apartment project and the economic development incentives it is seeking from the city, thus far the project is asking for industrial revenue bonds which will allow the development to avoid paying sales taxes on the construction materials needed to build the project.

On the list of economic development incentives offered by the city, that is not one of the larger ones. However, it is worth remembering that the entire Crossing district has already received heavy economic development incentives from City Hall. As we reported in 2023, the entire Crossing district received tax increment financing. That’s a mechanism that captures new property taxes generated in the district, and allows those new property tax dollars to pay for infrastructure such as roads, utilities, parking and other development-related costs.

So, the proposed apartment project is not seeking any property tax breaks from the city, but for about the first 20 years, the new property taxes generated by the development will be earmarked to help pay for development costs.

City officials received the application for industrial revenue bonds for the project earlier this month, but have not yet approved the bonds. The request now will go through a city review process before coming back to the City Commission for consideration.

photo by: Courtesy: KU Endowment/Douglas County

This 2022 rendering shows a potential street-level view of The Crossing development, which would add commercial, retail and residential components to KU’s West Campus area near Clinton Parkway and Iowa Street.