Lawrence extends demolition pause in University Place to protect historic homes

University Place residents won more time to fight for the older homes that define their southeast Lawrence neighborhood, after the City Commission voted Tuesday night for a demolition pause that will run through Nov. 1.

The move came after months of alarm in a neighborhood originally platted in 1887, where residents say Lawrence’s new land development code could speed the replacement of modest single-family houses with denser projects. That fear sharpened earlier this year when a home at 1812 Illinois St. came down soon after an earlier pause expired, and neighbors say a three-story duplex is now replacing it on a block made up largely of smaller homes.

Pam Burkhead, vice president of the University Place Neighborhood Association, said the neighborhood’s older houses are tied to more than architecture. She described University Place as an old-fashioned neighborhood with block parties, Halloween activities and regular meetings, and said demolition erodes the social fabric as much as it changes the streetscape.

Mandy Enfield, the neighborhood association president, said demolition began less than two weeks after the earlier moratorium expired, a pace that convinced residents they needed stronger safeguards. The association now wants time to survey properties, build a case for historic preservation and push for protections before more houses disappear.

Those protections matter because residents fear the city’s updated code could bring more occupancy, more duplexes, accessory dwelling units and faster approvals to a part of town that has long been defined by older homes near the University of Kansas campus. Journal-World reporting in 2024 put the neighborhood at 267 households, with the University Place Neighborhood organization dating to 1987.

The temporary moratorium area is generally bounded by Sunnyside Avenue on the north, Louisiana Street on the east, 19th Street on the south and Arkansas Street on the west. City documents show the earlier 2025 pause also covered certain addresses tied to 14 founders of the Lawrence chapter of the NAACP, underscoring how preservation concerns in University Place reach beyond one block or one teardown.

Lawrence’s historic-preservation system dates to the Lawrence Register of Historic Places, created in 1988, and the city’s Historic Resources Commission is meant to protect cultural, social, economic, political and architectural history. University Place residents want that system to move from theory to action before redevelopment pressure redraws one of Lawrence’s oldest neighborhoods, and perhaps sets the tone for other older pockets of Douglas County as well.