Major west Lawrence housing plan delayed, annexation still expected to return
A 650-acre west Lawrence annexation stalled over an incomplete rezoning filing, but the developer expects it back in May as housing pressure stays high.
The plan to open up 650 acres west of the South Lawrence Trafficway stalled before the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission could even vote, pushing back one of the city’s biggest potential housing and commercial expansions near the Bob Billings Parkway interchange. City planning director Jeff Crick said the annexation request was pulled because the rezoning application was incomplete, and developer Phil Bundy said the project is still alive and should return in May once the needed engineering work is finished.
The delay matters because this is not a small edge-of-town subdivision. The annexation could make room for thousands of new homes, along with a larger retail and commercial district on Lawrence’s western edge. That is the kind of growth city leaders have been trying to line up as they confront a housing market where, according to the Lawrence Affordable Housing Study released April 2, over half of renters and many homebuyers cannot afford current prices. The study found that 76% of survey respondents had trouble finding a home they could afford in Lawrence, and it said the city has a shortage across nearly all housing types.
Those pressures are visible in the numbers. The study reported a median home sale price of $323,000 over the last two years, and said 57% of renters could not afford a two-bedroom unit priced at $1,252. For west Lawrence, that means the timing of this annexation is tied directly to when more homes can be built, when new streets and utilities are extended, and when prices may finally get some relief from a tighter supply.
The city has been planning for this kind of growth for years. An April 4 Journal-World analysis said utility planners were expecting westward expansion 16 years ago, yet the sewer growth projections used by the city were off by about 60%. The same analysis said Lawrence is on pace to have about 20,000 fewer residents in 2030 than the sewer plant plan envisioned. That mismatch helps explain why a delay in annexation can ripple far beyond a single parcel, affecting when roads, water lines and sewer capacity are built to serve new neighborhoods.
Bundy has said the broader west-side development push could total $1 billion to $1.3 billion and come online in five to seven years. In December, he described a roughly 800-acre land purchase west of the Bob Billings interchange, with about 700 acres for residential use and about 100 acres for commercial development. Earlier planning for the southwest corridor also showed how the idea has shifted, from a bigger commercial concept to a housing-first district that included more than 100 single-family homes, three hotels and entertainment-oriented commercial land.
Lawrence has already set aside a little more than $40 million in road, sewer and water improvements from 2024 through 2028 to help open land west of the South Lawrence Trafficway, including an extension of Bob Billings Parkway west of the trafficway. A little-used sidewalk near the site is already in place, a small sign that the city’s next growth frontier has been taking shape long before the first homes go up.
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