Douglas County weighs tax payments from KU Innovation Park tenants

Douglas County commissioners weighed a plan to make KU Innovation Park collect payments from mature tenants and pass the money to the county, turning part of the nonprofit campus into a new source of local revenue. The proposed arrangement would start in 2027 and run through 2037, with the charges rising from $2.12 per square foot to $2.77 by the end of the term.

Commissioners cut $60,000 from KU Innovation Park’s 2026 contribution. Douglas County’s proposed 2026 budget totaled $191.4 million and kept a flat 41.298-mill levy, even as property taxes made up 75% of county revenues. Commissioner Patrick Kelly said it was his third year asking for a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes plan, while Commissioner Shannon Reid said she had initially considered cutting the organization entirely. Commissioner Karen Willey pushed back on that idea, arguing that KU Innovation Park remained a major driver of economic diversification.

Under the proposal, the park itself would not hand over a direct property-tax check. Instead, it would collect payments from companies that had moved beyond incubation, had operations in other locations, or operated as for-profit entities, then forward the money on the county’s behalf. Nonprofits, research-only tenants, vacant space and very early-stage startups would be left out.

In its FY 2022-23 fact sheet, KU Innovation Park put its activity at $136.5 million in income to the Douglas County economy and 1,015 jobs. The park employed 10 staff members and business analyst interns, with payroll of about $965,000. After Phase III was completed in 2023, the park was home to 74 companies employing 765 people with annual payroll of $50.7 million.

KU Innovation Park has a 2036 plan for 10 facilities on West Campus, and it received a $500,000 Kansas Department of Commerce FORGE grant in 2024 and $22 million in federal funding for a Phase IV facility that year. Adam Courtney became chief executive in March 2024 after serving as interim leader following the death of founding executive chair LaVerne Epp in September 2023. Epp helped launch the park in 2008, when it was known as the Bioscience and Technology Business Center.