The Lenexa City Council gave the green light to plans for a multifamily residential development near Lenexa City Center.
On Tuesday, the city council voted 5-0 to approve rezoning and a preliminary plan for Ross Canyon, a 44-acre multifamily residential project planned for one of the last vacant lots near Lenexa City Center. Councilmembers Joe Karlin and Bill Nicks were absent.
The project consists of 374 apartment and 95 townhomes stretched across seven buildings on a plot of land south of Lenexa City Center, off 93rd Street between Mill Creek Road and Renner Boulevard.
Wichita-based PETRA is the applicant and El Dorado, a firm with an office in Kansas City, Missouri, is the project’s architect.
The project will be built near other developments
The 44-acre project will be built on undeveloped land that was zoned as agriculture and single-family residential in 2002 for a golf course that was never built, according to city documents. The land would be rezoned to Planned Residential Medium High-Density and Planned Residential High-Density districts.
Ross Canyon would be located near several other multifamily developments, including the upcoming Reflections apartment and office buildings to the east, The Villas of Fairway Woods duplexes to the northwest and Prairie Creek Townhomes to the south, as well as the Canyon Farms Golf Club on the north and west.
The buildings would range in size from two- to five-story structures. Construction would be broken up into three phases with the first phase expected to begin in March 2025.
As part of the project, a new section of 91st Street, to the east of the project, between Lifetime Fitness and the north part of the Reflections development, is required to be completed before the apartments can receive a Certificate of Occupancy.
The apartment sizes will range from 750 to 1,400 square feet with market-rate rent prices, said Tyler Burks, a representative with PETRA, to the commission.
When asked by Councilmember Chris Herron what market rate prices are, Tyler Burks, a representative with PETRA, clarified it was between $1,400 per month for a studio apartment and about $2,250 for a two-bedroom space. Townhomes will range between $2,600 to $3,100, depending on the size of the space.
“The Peak at Sonoma (apartment rate) is what I copied off of, essentially, to be honest with you,” he said. “It works for the pro forma. So that’s what we’re using.”
Designs previously caused a snag
During a previous planning commission meeting, the project was criticized for having a uniform, “World War II barracks”-like design.
When the project returned to the planning commission earlier this month, commissioners praised the changes as a “vast improvement.”
During the city council meeting, Stephanie Kisler, Lenexa planning manager, echoed that praise and the developer’s willingness to adjust to their feedback.
“The applicant worked well with staff and the suggestions from the planning commission with respect to architecture, and really made this a unique project,” she said. “(They are) taking forth some of the design elements that they originally had, and then elaborated upon those and made them fit into sort of what we had suggested with the City of Lenexa design standards.”
Neighbors still have concerns
At a previous planning commission meeting discussing the project, residents at the nearby Cottonwood Canyon subdivision expressed worries about traffic coming through neighborhoods close to the development.
As part of the project, the city will install traffic calming measures, like a divided section of the street with a raised median in the area, which will connect Mill Creek Parkway to Ross Canyon to slow down and control the flow of traffic.
“Traffic calming measures would encourage residents to go down 93rd Street and then exit onto Renner Boulevard, as opposed to trying to travel through Cottonwood Canyon,” Dalecky said.
While the Cottonwood Canyon Homes Association is happy with the developers’ openness to feedback, they remain skeptical that the traffic calming measures will be effective.
“The traffic calming measures currently included in the plan may serve to slow traffic within Ross Canyon, but will do little to deter traffic entering/exiting the development through our subdivision,” Alan Shorthouse, president of the Cottonwood Canyon Homes Association, wrote in a letter to city council.
The HOA hopes that the developers will continue to take their feedback and work on more measures to deter traffic in their neighborhood, Shorthouse stated in the letter.
The city council praised the project
Before the city council voted, councilmembers expressed praise and optimism for the project.
The addition of townhomes to the area should serve families well when looking to rent in the area, Councilmember Courtney Eiterich said.
“We don’t have that. We have one- and two-bedroom apartments,” she said. “You have a couple of kids and you want to live in a townhouse.”
While she said she wasn’t sold on the original design for the project, Councilmember Chelsea Williamson said she was impressed by the revisions.
“It’s a difficult piece of land, otherwise it would have been developed before 1983, so I really am impressed with what you’ve done,” said Councilmember Chelsea Williamson.
Go deeper: On second try, apartment plan near Lenexa City Center wins commission’s OK
