photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A piece of property west of the South Lawrence Trafficway and Bob Billings Parkway interchange is shown with Lawrence homes in the background on April 30, 2026.

A massive annexation request touted as the first step to adding more than 1,000 single family homes west of the South Lawrence Trafficway has changed.

It is less massive and less about single family housing — at least temporarily.

We’ve been reporting for months that a group led by a Wichita businessman is pursuing the annexation of 650 acres west of the SLT in an area that generally is north and west of the Bob Billings Drive and SLT interchange. The businessman has said the annexation — one of the largest in the city’s history — would accommodate 1,000 to 1,200 single family homes, plus additional development over the next five years or so.

But we also reported in April that those plans hit a speed bump. The annexation request was pulled from the April meeting of the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission due to an incomplete application.

It now appears some of the incompleteness of the application was related to some of the landowners deciding to pull their property out of the annexation request. The plan by Phil Bundy and his K-10 Development Group has re-emerged but now is significantly smaller after some property owners pulled out of the plan.

The new annexation request is for 288 acres rather than the 650 acres previously proposed. The number of acres proposed for residential development also has decreased dramatically. The latest plan calls for approximately 110 acres of residential development, down from 420 acres of residential property proposed in the original plan.

Bundy, though, told me on Thursday that the group still believes it ultimately will annex the entire 650 acres and follow through on hundreds of new acres for single family residential development.

“Believe me, that is still way up at the top of our list,” Bundy said of the large scale single-family residential development.

photo by: City of Lawrence

A 288-acre annexation request west of the South Lawrence Trafficway is shown. The road on the right edge of the illustration is the SLT. The road along the top of the illustration is Sixth Street.

Bundy — who has been a longtime developer in Wichita but is now based in Johnson County — said there are two reasons the size of the development shrunk. Bundy acknowledged one of the property owners in the area did pull their property from the plan, but Bundy said he thinks that property owner will be open to rejoining the development once it sees it winning support at Lawrence City Hall.

The other reason the development shrunk is because Bundy made a strategic decision to remove the most western properties from the plan. Those properties are far enough outside the current city limits that they fall into a designation known as “Tier 3” in the city’s planning documents. City planners usually only recommend annexations occur in “Tier 2” zones, which are closer to the city limits. Bundy said he wasn’t sure the request to annex land in Tier 3 would win the necessary approval from planners.

“We thought it might cause problems,” Bundy said of the request.

Bundy said the decision was made to remove the westernmost properties from the current development. He said his group will spend time developing plans on how those properties could be served by city water and sewer services, and then will seek to have the westernmost properties labeled as Tier 2 properties, which would create a clearer path to annexation.

All those changes, though, have flipped the development on its head. The most recent plan now actually proposes more commercial development than residential development. The most recent plan calls for 126 acres of community commercial zoning, which would allow everything from big box retailers, restaurants and even a 3,000-seat indoor arena, which is one of the ideas Bundy’s group has proposed. The 126 acres in the current plan is the same amount proposed in the original plan. Meanwhile, the land set aside for residential development has shrunk to 110 acres in the most recent plan.

It probably is fair to say that most of the excitement that city leaders had expressed about the expansion of the city west of the SLT was related to to the prospect of adding lots of new homes to a market that has been setting record lows for single family home construction. The low number of new housing starts has contributed to a tight supply of housing, which in turn has contributed to rising home prices.

The idea that a new area of town could open up and provide building lots for more than 1,000 single family homes has excited the real estate community, which argues that an increased supply of homes eventually will help moderate prices in Lawrence.

But with the latest plan reducing the amount of land set aside for residential uses by more than 70%, it seems likely this development won’t come close to providing building lots for 1,000 new single-family homes.

“It will be fewer,” Bundy said of the number of single family homes the 110 acres could accommodate versus the previously proposed 420 acres of residential development.

Bundy didn’t provide an estimate on how many fewer homes the new proposal could accommodate, but instead said he was confident his development group would ultimately get the rest of the property annexed into the city, which would put the group on track to once again have room for 1,000 to 1,200 single family homes over the next several years.

“That is really critical to us,” Bundy said of the residential component.

The timeline for when those additional acres could be added back to the plan, however, is uncertain.

The most recent proposal, though, will allow for some single family development to proceed. The plans call for about 87 acres of R-2 and R-3 zoned land, which can accommodate some single family or duplex construction. The latest proposal also calls for about 23 acres of R-4 zoning, which could allow for apartment-style development.

Bundy confirmed that his group is actively planning for an affordable housing apartment complex on about 18 acres of land near the First United Methodist Church property, which is near the southwest corner of the Sixth Street and SLT interchange.

Bundy said his group also is actively working with retailers for the 126 acres of proposed commercial development, which largely would stretch along the South Lawrence Trafficway between Sixth Street and Bob Billings Parkway.

A document filed with the city actually lists several retailers that potentially could locate in the development. Among the retailers mentioned were: Academy Sports, Barnes & Noble booksellers, Lowe’s Home Improvement, and a Trader Joe’s grocery.

However, when asked about the names included in the document, Bundy said he didn’t yet have deals with any of the retailers.

“None of those deals are done,” Bundy said. “Those are people we are talking to.”

Bundy, though, said he’s encouraged by the potential to add new retailers to the Lawrence market.

“We have been doing research and Lawrence is really behind where it should be not only on retail sales but on the retailers that should be in Lawrence but aren’t,” he said.

None of the project, however, will move forward unless the Lawrence City Commission approves the annexation and rezoning requests. The Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission, however, has recommended approval of the annexation and rezoning requests. At its Monday meeting, the Planning Commission recommended approval of the annexation request on a 8-1 vote, and the various rezoning requests were approved with anywhere from one to three commissioners voting against, with the commercial zoning attracting the most opposition.

Bundy said he believes the Lawrence City Commission will consider the annexations and rezoning requests in mid-August.

If city commissioners approve those requests, that still may not be the end of the approval process. As we’ve reported, Bundy’s group is proposing to pay for some of the development expenses through the state’s STAR bond program, which allows local and state sales tax dollars to be captured. Use of STAR bonds would require another set of approvals, and presents a whole host of financial considerations for local officials. I plan to report back on the numbers in those applications in the near future.