After three years of planning, the Lenexa City Council on Tuesday approved a new comprehensive plan that lays the groundwork for the city through 2040 and beyond.
At its meeting Tuesday night, the council gave the green light to a revised comprehensive plan, a document that serves as an aspirational roadmap for the next 20 years of development and land use in the city.
The council passed the plan with a 5-2 vote. Councilmembers Bill Nicks and Mark Charlton were in dissent. Councilmember Courtney Eiterich was absent.
What is a comprehensive plan?
- State law authorizes local governments to create comprehensive plans that outline long-term development patterns and goals for a city or county.
- Lenexa’s revised comprehensive plan adopted Tuesday was the result of three years of meetings, surveys and focus groups with city staff, residents and high schoolers, asking them what they want to see in the area.
- Comprehensive plans typically provide policy direction related to land use changes, planning for capital improvements and directing a city’s future growth.
- Comprehensive plans can also guide decisions for city councils and planning commissions.
Lenexa’s plan was last updated in 2016
Taking input from those surveyed, the plan forecasts future trends in Lenexa including in the areas os:
- Community Vision, Goals and Objectives
- Land Use & Development
- Housing & Neighborhoods
- Economic Development
- Transportation & Mobility
- Community Facilities & Infrastructure
- Natural Areas, Parks & Open Space
- Implementation Strategies
“The heart of the exercise, the effort, is to take areas of some size and sort of employ current market demand pressures, context and try to get to a future land use that works,” said Scott McCullough, Lenexa’s community development director, in a previous interview.
A lot has changed in Lenexa since 2016
Since the last comprehensive plan, the Lenexa City Council has approved a variety of housing developments, including the Oak IQ Copper Creek development and The Residences at Woodsonia projects, as well as expanded areas of business, like Lenexa City Center.
One of the big changes the new plan predicts is a shift away from big box retail spaces and offices to more housing and non-office business parks.
“In 2016, the office market and big box retailers were very strong, and additional office parks and big box retailers were envisioned in the community,” the newly adopted plan states. “Today, these markets are more volatile, and additional office parks and large retail uses are not expected.”
The plan also focuses on amenities that residents want to see more of, including recreational trails and parks, as well as potentially thorny issues like missing middle housing.
Discussion Tuesday hit a snag over high-density housing
While he praised the work that went into the plan, councilmember Bill Nicks said the inclusion of more high-density housing projects on the future land use map caused him to vote against it.
“We have plenty of high-density apartments already built or approved and ready to be built. We don’t need an additional 207 acres of high density,” he said, a reference to the amount of new high-density acreage included in the new plan.
While McCullough and Mayor Julie Sayers clarified that the comprehensive plan was aspirational and not set in stone, Nicks made a motion to remove the additional high-density housing from the plan. Councilmember Joe Karlin seconded that motion.
After city staff took a 10-minute recess to discuss the logistics of the motion — as well as taking time to regroup after a power outage during the meeting — they determined Nicks would have to make a motion to remand the plan to the planning commission to review his proposed change.
At that point, both Nicks and Karlin withdrew their previous motion, and Nicks made a new motion to remand it to the planning commission. While Karlin seconded that motion (with the caveat that he wanted to discuss it), he ultimately did not vote in favor of remanding the plan back to the commission.
“I’m opposed to (high density housing). But I think if we do remand it, we’re going to come back with the same result,” Karlin said. “So I don’t see that effort being productive … Even though I would like a different result, I don’t see it coming out with a different result.”
Western Lenexa development also proved a talking point
Focusing on western Lenexa, councilmember Mark Charlton took issue with where businesses were being developed and the thought that his constituents weren’t as involved with the talks over the revised plan as they had hoped.
“The thing that they want to know was, ‘When is there a grocery store’ or ‘When is a major retailer’ (coming in)?” he said. “I look at the new plan and it’s kind of taking, potentially, some of those things out and putting them into business parks.”
Highlighting the northeast corner of K-7 and K-10 Highways, where Charlton said it’s predicted a fulfillment center will go, he thought it is more fit for a mixed-use zone.
Currently, that area is zoned for different commercial and retail uses.
“I’m concerned with having a big-box fulfillment center being at those intersections when those could be some really wonderful major mixed-use sort of uses,” he said.
That may not be realistic for the space, McCullough responded.
“The market is just not going to deliver the large expanse of regional commercial that we had planned for that area,” he said. “The way that the online shopping is doing nothing but trending upward and frankly, retail has been replaced with fulfillment centers … A lot of the big boxes are are converting to those kinds of things.”
Because the plan is a living document, there is a chance it could change for that area to fit in grocery stores and retail spaces, City Manager Beccy Yocham said.
“The future land use map is one tiny piece of this very big broad document that gives us all sorts of important guidance and strategies around complete neighborhoods and all of that,” she said. “You maybe can’t look at this map and know exactly where the next grocery store is going to go, but there are multiple locations where it could go.”
Most of the council was pleased with the plan
After discussing questions they had with the plan, most of the council agreed that it was thorough, thoughtful and promising for the future of the city.
“Scott (McCullough) and his folks have worked awfully hard for three and a half years and I think they’ve had plenty of community input, staff input and other things,” Councilmember Craig Denny said. “For many, many reasons, I’m going to vote in favor of adopting this comprehensive plan tonight.”
Councilmember Chris Herron added: “I think this moves us in that right direction. And I do understand that this is a guideline and nothing is fixed in the sense that we say ‘XYZ should go at location 123.’ And so I think this does give us flexibility for developing Lenexa in the future.”
In closing, Sayers commended the council on having a civil conversation, even though not everyone agreed with the plan, and thanked the city staff on their hard work.
“I think that we can answer to our residents in a way that the process was fully vetted, all stakeholders were included and everyone’s voice was heard,” she said. “We can move forward in a positive way understanding that we are a progressive and visionary community that does things the right way.”
Go deeper: Read the full comprehensive plan document
