Lawrence plans $130 million public works campus to modernize services

Before sunrise at the Solid Waste facility, workers crowd into a break room built in the 1970s, while supervisors raise their voices over the noise. City officials say that cramped scene is exactly why Lawrence is spending $130.2 million on a new Municipal Services & Operations campus designed to bring the people who fix streets, restore utilities, inspect buildings and haul trash into one purpose-built headquarters.

The campus is going up at VenturePark in eastern Lawrence, on the former Farmland Industries fertilizer plant site near 23rd Street and O’Connell Road. The city says the goal is more than a new set of buildings. By consolidating staff and facilities, officials expect to reduce travel time between sites, lower long-term maintenance and operating costs and improve service response across the city. City materials also say the project is targeting LEED Gold.

The first phase, which includes streets, utilities, traffic, inspections, construction management, engineering and administrative services, is scheduled to move in this summer. The second phase, which will include the central maintenance garage and solid-waste operations, is expected in fall 2027. City leaders say the finished campus will give employees better places to meet, store equipment, shower, change clothes and eat lunch, along with secured, consolidated facilities and a healthier workplace for essential workers.

The move is also tied to a long and complicated cleanup history at the former Farmland site. The Farmland Industries Nitrogen Plant began operating in 1954. Farmland began addressing environmental issues there under a Kansas Department of Health and Environment consent order in 1993, filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and was followed by a Farmland Industries Kansas Remediation Trust in 2004. The City of Lawrence acquired the 467-acre property in 2010, and the Farmland Industries Redevelopment Plan was adopted in 2008, then amended in 2016 and 2023.

That history has shaped the campus plan. City planning documents describe the consolidated field operations campus as the most cost-effective way to address regulatory compliance issues, improve efficiency, strengthen working conditions and create a sustainable, energy-efficient and neighborhood-friendly operation. In 2017, the city faced an emergency when nitrogen-impacted water collected at the site exceeded storage capacity, prompting a one-time conditional discharge to the Kansas River. In 2022, city officials said they were reducing the size and number of operations in response to neighborhood concerns.

Michael Leos, a city spokesman, has said the public often does not see how much MSO employees do every day. The new campus is meant to make that work easier to see in the places residents notice most, from faster street repairs to steadier trash pickup and quicker response when utilities or storms disrupt daily life.