Developers who want to turn excess parking at an office plaza in a much-watched Overland Park corridor into apartments and retail are going back to the drawing board.
The rezoning proposal at 7500 College Blvd. — dubbed Lighton Plaza — comes from Overland Park-based developer Price Brothers, who acquired the property a few years ago. The project features 160 apartment units as well as drive-thru restaurants and other retail.
On Monday, the Overland Park City Council unanimously voted to send the rezoning application at Lighton Plaza back to the Overland Park Planning Commission to give city staff and the developer time to work on amending the plan further.
During the discussion, multiple councilmembers said they’d prefer to see the property rezoned for mixed-use development instead of segmented into office, commercial and residential zonings.
They were also dissatisfied with the site layout, the inclusion of drive-thrus and a lack of higher-density residential development that would be permissible under the mixed-use zoning code.
It all comes as Overland Park ponders more seriously what to do with the area surrounding College and Metcalf and what the future might hold for that corridor.
“It’s hard to work in this kind of in-between space, but I really appreciate that we’re dealing with that discomfort here briefly,” said Councilmember Melissa Cheatham, “but this is a 50-year decision, and it’s really important to get it right.”
Last month, the planning commission voted to recommend denying the application, with the majority of commissioners dissatisfied with many of the same details that gave the city council pause this week.
City planning staff also recommended denial of the project as currently proposed, citing their concerns about putting auto-centric uses live drive-thrus right on College Boulevard in an area of the city where there’s been growing demand for walkability and other pedestrian-oriented amenities.
What is in the current Lighton Plaza proposal?
Price Brothers has proposed a four-story apartment building with 160 units, some below-building parking, a pool and a courtyard on the northwest quadrant of the property.
Another primary element is 35,300 square feet of commercial space spanning three buildings, two of which would have partially enclosed drive-thru restaurants. Another would have a sit-down restaurant. All of these buildings would be right on College Boulevard.
To pave the way for all of that, the developer wants to convert some of the office-zoned parking lot into the RP-6 (Planned High-Rise Apartment District) and CP-2 (Planned General Business District) zoning designations.
Existing multistory office buildings that span roughly 476,000 square feet would maintain office zoning and would remain untouched under this proposal.
Lighton Plaza falls in Overland Park’s redeveloping corridor
The Lighton Plaza property, right on College Boulevard near Metcalf Avenue, is within an area city officials want to see reinvented, backing away from the corporate office users that have historically defined the corridor and prioritizing walkable, mixed-use redevelopment.
The vision, called OP Central, is similar to the concept long-mapped for Metcalf Avenue, the economic spine for the city that intersects with College Boulevard near Lighton Plaza. This area itself is one of the most densely packed job centers in the entire metro area.
A large part of reimagining that is to remake some of the underutilized office spaces that are Overland Park’s primary industry and their associated seas of excess parking into uses — like higher-density residential living, parks, pedestrian-focused amenities, etc. — that serve visitors and employees in the hub alike.
Recently, Overland Park announced plans to move its city hall to the OP Central corridor around College and Metcalf over the next decade or so, and private investments in the area have ramped up as well.
Alongside all of that, Overland Park has added a long-range plan for this corridor with an eye toward creating a zoning overlay district — a special set of development codes similar to the special zoning classification used in downtown Overland Park — in the Unified Development Ordinance the city is currently revising.
“We have got to refine this more”
The fact that this effort is ongoing, and the future of it is uncertain, left councilmembers and planning commissioners alike hesitant to move forward with any kind of project that might fall in that gray area of what is and what could be.
And while the Lighton Plaza project checks a lot of city priorities off — like the reuse of excess parking and housing developments — the majority of councilmembers declined to advance it, worried the city might replicate some of the mistakes they see in other redevelopment projects throughout the city.
“This is what we’ve been looking for, actionizing this corridor, and I think we’re getting close,” Councilmember Jim Kite said. “We’ve had some projects come in from other developers that they sure were sexy when they got here, but we ended up getting a row of fast food places. We don’t want to do that here.”
Councilmember Logan Heley, in particular, said he worried the city is headed down the same road with College Boulevard as it did with Metcalf redevelopment efforts, citing the piecewise, drive-thru-heavy developments at the site of the former Metcalf South mall that don’t match up with the ideals from Vision Metcalf.
“I think there’s awesome potential here,” Heley said. “We have got to refine this more, in my opinion, to make it fit really what I think its full potential is now, not just in the future.”
He suggested he’d be willing to open conversations with the developer about incentives to help cover the cost of bringing the Lighton Plaza project up to the vision for College. (On the other hand, some councilmembers were skeptical about pursuing incentives at this particular site.)
At the same time, some councilmembers lamented the challenge of trying to balance the kinds of development they want in areas they’re prioritizing with the established precedent for the area.
“Not everything was going to be perfect on day one, especially when you do the first one, it’s not going to be exactly what we want, because we’re all trying to find the way to make it right,” said Councilmember Chris Newlin, adding that he could vote for the project as proposed.
Next steps:
- The rezoning application heads back to the planning commission for consideration, though the exact timeline for that is unclear.
- Between now and then, the city council wants to see fairly significant changes made to the application before it returns, focused on the actual zoning proposed, the site layout, more density and height in the residential portion of the project, and the inclusion of more walkable features.
- After that, the planning commission would need to vote on the matter again, and so would the city council before anything can move forward.
Keep reading: Overland Park wants to turn corporate College corridor into the city’s new center
