OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — City leaders in Overland Park, Kansas, will vote Monday night on whether to rezone land near 133rd Street and Metcalf Avenue to allow for an apartment complex.
Developers say the only way to keep the Deer Creek Golf Course open is to build the complex, thus generating new property tax revenue to pay for necessary repairs to Tomahawk Creek which runs through the course and is causing damage from erosion and flooding.
“We’re excited to be bringing a solution to the table that nobody's been able to crack that nut,” explained Austin Bradley, the executive vice president of EPC Real Estate, pointing to a report from 1997 identifying necessary repairs to the creek bed. “One thing that, whether you're for the project or against the project, I think globally everybody wants to save the golf course and this is how you do it.”
A group of people living in the neighborhood of single-family homes east of the proposed apartment site has rallied in opposition to the project. They’ve placed signs throughout the neighborhood reading “Stop high density apartments.” They’ve had all 12 city council members visit the neighborhood to see their perspectives. And the group sent a 90-page packet to city council members ahead of Monday’s meeting.
“I’m concerned for the future of Overland Park if we start setting precedents where we put single-family homes, and you buy your home in what you think is a neighborhood, and then you could have a high-density apartment right next to you,” explained Jill Schram, who helped organize the opposition.
Her group’s main argument focuses on zoning rules and requirements for gradual increases in density from single-family to large-scale multi-family.
Bradley and EPC counter by saying more than 60 percent of the area surrounding the proposed site are retail or office, so the apartments would serve as a buffer from the commercial Metcalf Avenue corridor to the single-family neighborhood.
The city’s planning commission recommended approval of the proposal after asking the developers to split one long building into two shorter buildings. Schram’s group argues the change actually increased the footprint of the project and did not fulfill the intent of the planning commission’s request.
The project now totals four buildings with 220 apartment units.
The city council meets at 7:30 p.m. Monday at city hall, located at 8500 Santa Fe Dr. The council could approve, deny or ask the developer to modify its plans.
