Ninth Street reopening expected before KU football season in Lawrence

Ninth Street west of downtown should reopen in time for KU football season in September. Mississippi Street has also been closed since April, keeping another key corridor out of service while crews work on Lawrence’s Jayhawk Watershed stormwater project.

The watershed project began in late March 2025 and carries a price tag of more than $22 million. It is replacing storm sewers that are more than a century old, including an underground stone culvert built in 1911 that now provides less than a two-year level of service. That means there is a 50% chance a storm could overwhelm the system and trigger flooding. The watershed runs from the University of Kansas campus to the Kansas River, covering homes and businesses that have dealt with localized flooding during heavy rain.

A Dec. 9, 2025 commission action added $4.82 million to the project budget and extended the Ninth Street closure through summer 2026. City staff decided not to reopen the street for the World Cup, and city engineering program manager Nick Hoyt said the city wanted to avoid shutting down a larger area for too long. Commissioner Kristine Polian raised the question of whether a partial lane closure could have reduced the hit to nearby businesses.

Construction on north Iowa Street is set to begin Monday, July 6, with lane reductions from 6th Street to Harvard Road. The project will keep one lane open in each direction while crews handle asphalt mill and overlay work, new pavement markings, curb and gutter replacement and sidewalk accessibility improvements. The work is part of the Kansas Department of Transportation’s City Connecting Link Improvement Program and is expected to run until September, weather and other delays permitting.

The city’s current plan calls for Massachusetts Street Multimodal Improvements from 14th Street to 23rd Street to start construction in fall 2026, after three open houses and other public engagement in 2023 and 2024 and another public open house on March 31, 2026. The project would convert the corridor from four lanes to three, add protected bike lanes, improve sidewalks and ADA ramps, install a HAWK signal at 17th Street, add mid-block crossings and remove a westbound high-speed right-turn lane at 23rd Street. The 15th-to-19th Street stretch is in the city’s High Injury Network and has seen about 122 injury crashes.