Lenexa is hoping to add more midrange housing options — including potentially townhomes and affordable starter homes — to areas of the city still open for development.
This type of housing, often called “missing middle housing,” tends to be more dense and attainable cost-wise, though it’s lacking in many communities where there might be a market for it, Community Development Director Scott McCullough said.
Encouraging these new housing options has so far been a major focus of the city’s comprehensive plan update process.
What is a comprehensive plan?
- Comprehensive plans are used by municipal governments to identify long-term and ideal development patterns for a city.
- They also usually discuss things like transportation needs and the environment.
- These plans can last decades and guide decision-making, but Lenexa tends to revisit the city’s every so often to update it as needed, McCullough said. The last such review was in 2016.
- City councils sign off on them, typically after lengthy public discussion and input from the community.
- Cities themselves don’t do the work of actual development, but set out the recommendations and the rules for developers who will down the line.
Why update Lenexa’s comprehensive plan now?
- McCullough told the Post this particular review is timely.
- The city has developed roughly 75% of its total footprint, leaving just about a quarter of available land left to be built out.
- Also, coming out of COVID-19, some development priorities have shifted: “Supply and demand has changed a lot since the pandemic,” he said.
Revisions aim to prioritize “missing middle housing”
Exactly what the end result of this process will look like for Lenexa is unclear at this stage, though McCullough said it could ultimately require the city to consider changes to city code and a reevaluation of some of the city’s long-range residential development plans.
In June, McCullough told the planning commission that there are two scenarios that could make more room for missing middle housing:
- Update the city’s land-use map to reflect residential areas with more medium-level density, measured by the number of dwelling units per acre.
- Update city code and policies to create more flexibility for different densities in existing zoning types on a re-envisioned land-use map.
If those plans are realized, it could mean more attached housing options — like townhomes and row houses, available to own — could be be built over time.
Missing middle housing could also include affordable starter homes.
All of these options are still discussion points, and nothing has been finalized yet.
Housing affordability is a hot topic in Johnson County
Over the past few years, housing affordability and attainability in Johnson County has been a topic of much debate as single-family home prices — new and old, alike — skyrocket.
Last month, part of the Lenexa Planning Commission’s conversation hinted at some of the strife other Johnson County communities have run into, most notably Prairie Village, when the topic of expanding the types of housing options comes up.
Lenexa is different from some of the cities that have had more heated exchanges on the topic, McCullough said.
For one thing, Lenexa still has open space to build in, which is something of an empty canvas, and the city is not wrangling over neighborhoods that are already developed.
Also, Lenexa has generally been pretty open to mixed-use developments — projects that put housing, commercial and other types of zoning in close proximity to each other — and more diverse residential development projects, McCullough said.
Those types of projects already do or could potentially fit in with the drive to add “missing middle housing” options.
He added that the city would still make sure development is “contextually sensitive” to the neighborhoods and areas it’s planned for, noting that every middle housing solution wouldn’t work everywhere.
Even the planning commission, though cautious in June, seemed to agree it was time to start considering these changes in Lenexa’s comprehensive plan.
“We’re not going to be able to sidestep this,” Vice Chair Mike Burson said. “We’re laying out as a city what we want to start thinking about, how we’re going to implement it in the future.”
Other comprehensive plan revisions on the table
- Lenexa’s comprehensive plan also has areas identified for commercial, business and industrial developments, and McCullough said the revisions are likely to touch those areas too.
- Particularly in the areas around K-7 and K-10, Lenexa once envisioned big regional retail developments or large-scale office parks, like Corporate Woods in Overland Park. But those types of projects aren’t getting built to that scale anymore.
- Instead, those areas could become home to small-scale retail, business parks and even multifamily residential projects.
- The city may also expand the commercial node concept, which identifies small sectors of land for low-impact retail and services in areas of residential growth. Recently, the city council approved one near the Arbor Lake neighborhood and the Mize Hill twin villas community.
Lenexa’s next steps:
- The comprehensive plan revision is still in its drafting phase, which means none of this is a done deal. The draft is still being developed at this time.
- Later, a full draft will go before the city’s comprehensive plan steering committee and come up for public input.
- After that, the planning commission and city council will both have to consider it before the updated comprehensive plan becomes active.
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