Plans for a new residential development in western Lenexa that will feature single-family homes and townhouses for rent narrowly passed the Lenexa City Council after neighbors filed a protest petition against the project.
On Tuesday, the city council approved rezoning and a preliminary plan for Hedge Lane Residential, a new development near 91st and Dunraven streets, just west of Kansas Highway 7.
On both items, the council voted 7-2, with Councilmembers Courtney Eiterich and Bill Nicks in dissent.
Because neighboring residents filed a valid protest petition with 355 signatures, the items needed a supermajority of at least 7 votes to be approved.
Filling a “missing middle” housing shortage
Some councilmembers expressed concerns about the project, especially over its possible lack of parking.
Still, Mayor Julie Sayers and other councilmembers pressed for the project’s approval.
“It is developments like this that have this sort of missing middle (housing), particularly to the three-and-four-bedroom type product, that we don’t see get built a lot,” Sayers said, during an hour-long discussion of the project, trying to persuade some holdout councilmembers.
“So I think this is a unique opportunity that we may not get again in another location,” she said.
More housing, though, doesn’t necessarily mean the units will be affordable for many renters.
Rent for the project’s units once completed will be about $3,000 per month, according to the developer. That’s well above the average rent of about $1,700 in Johnson County, according to Zillow.
The almost 14-acre development will include 18 single-family lots and 68 townhome units distributed among 13 buildings.
The council approved rezoning the area from AG, Agricultural District, to RP-1, Planned Residential (Low-Density) and RP-2, Planned Residential (Intermediate-Density).
Chicago-based 29th Street Capital is the developer for the project. The company owns three other properties in the Kansas City metro, including an Olathe apartment complex.
The development would be built in a field
The planned site for the Hedge Lane Residential project is currently a field with one residence on the property, which will be bought by the developer and demolished, according to the plan.
The site was annexed into the city in 1999 as part of 2,000 acres brought into the city limits at that time.
During the meeting Nikola Krcmarevic, vice president of 29th Street Capital, said the site will contain a number of amenities like trails that connect to other walkways in Lenexa, a dog park and pavilions that will make it a community-centered space.
“We are removing the fences around this site and opening it up to the rest of the community with public streets and open spaces,” he said.
Traffic remains major concern for neighbors
Five neighbors spoke in opposition to the project on Tuesday. Their major concern was the potential increase in traffic the development would bring, as well as vehicles for construction driving through their neighborhoods.
“Our biggest concern is the traffic is going to be the construction that’s going to be coming in right there, where everybody’s coming in and out on (Dunraven Street),” Susan McCurdy, a nearby resident to the proposed development, said.
Another neighbor, Lee Stickle, echoed those fears.
“I’m concerned about the traffic and not having the infrastructure to support it. The bridge over K-7 has been lacking since we moved out there in 2018,” she said.
Beyond traffic, neighbors worried about the lack of parking options in the development, which prohibits street parking. They said that could potentially cause parked cars to spill into other neighborhoods.
“I’m right on Dunraven. If you only have 15 places to park, your people are parking on my street because I live at the end of a cul-de-sac that has no houses on the end. So now I’m going to have unwanted people parked in front of my house,” Stickle said.
Neighbors, council pushed back on a comment
During a previous planning commission meeting, Marvin Davis, another nearby resident, made a comment that several councilmembers and neighbors felt compelled to address at Tuesday’s meeting.
On Oct. 6, Davis told planning commissioners, “(This project) is just not well planned, people. I welcome R-1 (low-density, single-family residential) for the whole thing, but not R-2 and the type of people that come with that.”
On Tuesday, Councilmember Chris Herron pushed back against that sentiment, asking what that meant and who specifically that was targeting.
“It’s fair to say that we do not give these kind of comments any sway in our consideration for a project,” he said.
In response, several other neighboring residents said they also disagreed with the prior comment.
“We have a very multicultural community in The Reserves [a neighboring subdivision], every possible major nation in the world is around us, and we embrace them,” McCurdy said.
Lengthy councilmember discussion
Five councilmembers immediately voiced support for the project.
“I think it fits the suitability of this particular parcel of land,” Councilmember Chelsea Williamson said.
But Nicks was firmly opposed, while Eiterich said she thought it was a good project but couldn’t get past the lack of parking.
“You have to make the right accommodations to account for those kind of people in your neighborhood, and I have a real problem with … the lack of parking in the driveways for that kind of space that you’re going to have in there,” she said.
At first, Councilmembers John Michael Handley and Mark Charlton were leaning on voting against the project, but comments from Mayor Julie Sayers and Councilmember Craig Denny convinced them to support it.
“We could deny this and wait and get something that the neighbors aren’t going to like, either. That might be a commercial development that has just as much traffic or more, and I think we will have lost an opportunity to continue to develop housing that we hear all the time,” Sayers said.
With that said, both Handley and Charlton said they both had reservations about the development but were ultimately in favor of it moving forward.
“I am concerned about parking on site. I would like the developer to look at that. I’d like to see about possibly reducing the townhomes across from the single-family homes to (make them single-family),” Charlton said. “I don’t think that there’s anything that we could do that’s that’s better than this.”
Go deeper: Lenexa commission advances mixed-residential project near K-7 Highway
