Midco Prairie will turn downtown Lawrence lot into native-plant oasis

Work began in early April on a vacant lot beside Midco’s downtown office at 644 New Hampshire St., turning an underused parcel into Midco Prairie, a public native-plant space meant to do more than soften the block. The project sits at Seventh and New Hampshire streets in downtown Lawrence, inside the city’s Downtown Urban Conservation Overlay District, and it is being framed as a practical test of whether a small private lot can deliver visible public value instead of just becoming another parking surface.

The change follows Midco’s renovation downtown. The company opened a newly renovated Customer Experience Center at 644 New Hampshire St. on Feb. 5, and its Lawrence service-area page lists the downtown store at the same address. After relocating near Seventh and Rhode Island streets, Midco identified the adjacent lot as a place that could be put to work. Pat McAdaragh, Midco’s chair and CEO, said the company saw an opportunity to turn a vacant lot into something meaningful for Lawrence. Midco is fully funding the park, while Native Lands Restoration Collaborative has full creative freedom over the design.

Native Lands Restoration Collaborative is leading the build with a plan that reaches beyond landscaping. Courtney Masterson, the group’s executive director, said the space is intended as an urban oasis where people can experience prairie grassland, woodlands and wetlands in downtown Lawrence. The final design is expected to include zones of native plants that reflect Douglas County’s landscape history, pockets of native trees, edible woody plants and rain gardens that can capture and filter runoff. Native Lands’ spring 2026 newsletter also says the park will include an ADA-accessible native flagstone path, ephemeral prairie trails, a community gathering space, rain-garden filtration and educational labeling.

The project carries extra weight because of the land it is trying to recall. Two hundred years ago, the area that is now Douglas County was nearly 90% tallgrass prairie, according to the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research. Today, much of that original ecosystem has been replaced by cultivated land and young woodlands, giving a downtown prairie restoration both symbolic and educational force. In the heart of Lawrence, the lot will function as a visible reminder of what the county looked like before most of the prairie disappeared.

Construction partners include Lawrence Arborists, SpyderArt Constructors, Sur Landscape Architecture and local stonemason Karl Ramberg. Native Lands says a ribbon-cutting is planned for the fall, and public opportunities to help steward the space will follow. If the project works as intended, Midco Prairie could become a model for other vacant parcels in downtown Lawrence, showing how private land can be converted into a public-facing place that handles stormwater, teaches local ecology and changes the look of the business district at street level.