A developer is revisiting the long-shelved final phase of a subdivision plan in north-central Olathe, hoping to finally complete the development and add more new homes to Johnson County’s tight housing market.
However, residents in and around the already-completed parts of the neighborhood are pushing back, saying the developer’s plans don’t fit with the city’s long-term vision for the area.
Earlier this month, the Olathe City Council approved a modification to the city’s Woodland Corridor Plan, a necessary step for adding extra homes to the original final phase of the Red Hawk Run single-family neighborhood.
The city council voted 5-1, with Councilmember Dean Vakas in opposition. His concerns hinged primarily on his discomfort with diverging from the Woodland plan at this juncture.
Councilmember Kevin Gilmore was absent from the meeting.
What is the Woodland Corridor Plan?
Olathe first adopted the Woodland Corridor Plan in 1998 as the city prepared to annex much of the land in the Woodland area in the north-central part of the city.
That plan established, among other things, a policy requiring larger-than-typical single-family lots to be used to transition when they neighbored existing large-lot homes.
An amended version of that corridor plan has been used to guide development in this area of the city near Kansas Highway 10 over the years, including the first couple of phases of the Red Hawk Run neighborhood.
But, in the early 2000s, the final phase of the Red Hawk Run neighborhood — which included 25 single-family homes — was shelved by its original developer and never built.
In 2021, Overland Park-based GRATA Development acquired the final undeveloped slice of the site at auction, but that company also never moved ahead with a plan to build it out.
In addition to being subject to the Woodland Corridor Plan, the site is bounded on the east by a BNSF railroad line. That, paired with Woodland Road to the west of the site, has made for a narrow property that is hard to develop, city planner Nathan Jurey said.
“It was not feasible, so we kind of just put it on ice,” GRATA’s president Travis Schram told the Post.
GRATA revisits Red Hawk Run amid housing shortage
Schram said that the site has continued to sit frozen since then, but his recent involvement in conversations about housing availability and attainability inspired him to revisit it.
To make it work though, Schram told the city council that he’d need Olathe to modify the current transitional lot policy. That, he said, would make room for four additional homes in the final phase of the Red Hawk Run neighborhood to the south of the existing neighborhood.
Those changes, Schram said, would make the math work for his firm to go ahead and build out the neighborhood and sell the homes at an estimated price tag of $500,000.
He acknowledged that price point might not be considered affordable, but he said it could still add supply to a market that’s facing a shortage.
“Johnson County specifically does not have enough housing at all price points,” he said. “People in lower-priced homes can’t move up to their next home because there’s nothing for them to move into, right? And the people in their second home can’t move into their third home because there’s nothing to move into, and so the housing market is essentially frozen.”
In 2021, United Community Services of Johnson County released a county-wide housing study that illustrated both a broad housing shortage at many price points and high occupancy rates across the board.
Data from the MidAmerica Regional Council shows the housing shortage issue — a problem that has popped up across the U.S. — persists in Johnson County.
With that in mind, Schram said “inserting supply at various price points will help unfreeze the housing market in Johnson County,” and this could be the start of that effort.
Neighbors, developer at odds over Red Hawk Run plans
Had the city council not authorized the amendment to the corridor plan for the project, Schram said, “there’s no doubt” that the property would have continued to sit unused.
At the same time, neighbors have consistently opposed amendments and other attempts to diverge from the Woodland Corridor plan in the past.
During the March 18 city council meeting, Gregory Betzen, who owns an adjacent property, offered an alternative to the plan from GRATA that would still add homes to the final phase of Red Hawk Run but fewer so it could more closely align with the corridor plan.
Additionally, the city received more than 45 emails from the public about the project, the vast majority of which were from residents against the changes who implored the city to adhere to the Woodland Corridor Plan.
Next steps on Red Hawk Run:
- Down the line, the Olathe Planning Commission will need to approve a final plat.
- That will formally lay out the new lot lines and dedicate easements for street right-of-way and utilities.
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