While a state official mulls a dispute between Kansas University and an adjacent neighborhood, a new group is trying to prevent similar rifts in the future.
The KU Neighbors Coalition brings together representatives from the city, university and surrounding neighborhoods to talk about common issues.
“I’ve been calling it the ‘Good Neighbor Group,'” said Reggie Robinson, chief of staff for KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway.
Mayor Mike Rundle said the group was created when residents near the KU campus complained about plans for a new recreation center they said encroached on their neighborhood. It picked up steam when the Oread Neighborhood Assn. challenged KU’s decision to tear down houses in the 1300 block of Ohio Street to make way for new scholarship halls.
“We had already been trying to figure out what to do to improve the situation and change the way we do business,” Rundle said. “These other things came along and added grist for the mill.”
State Historic Preservation Officer Ramon Powers is still deciding whether KU will be allowed to destroy the Ohio Street homes. But officials say the coalition meetings may prevent such problems by letting city and neighborhood representatives in on the university’s plans earlier in the process.
“It would help the university grow where it needs to and do so in a way that the neighbors don’t feel completely left out,” Rundle said. “It would probably make that interface a little smoother.”
The group includes Leslie Tuttle, Marci Francisco and Arly Allen, representing the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods, Rundle and City Manager Mike Wildgen, representing the city, and Robinson, representing the university. The city, university and neighborhood association each chose their own representatives.
The meetings have been every two months, on average. The coalition met Wednesday; it meets next on March 27 in the Kansas Union. The coalition has not discussed whether its meetings are open to the public, but Wildgen said, “The public’s welcome as far as I’m concerned.”
Francisco, a former mayor and a space analyst for the university, is attending the coalition meetings as a neighborhood representative.
“I think it’s been useful for people to get their plans back off the shelves, dust them off and share them with other people,” she said. “Until you share that, you don’t know if you’re all heading in the same direction and where the trouble spots are going to be.”
Robinson admitted KU’s planning process sometimes has left neighborhood residents feeling as though they’ve been given “last-minute notice” of some nearby projects.
The coalition may not be a cure-all, however.
“It’s not going to create a situation where what the university does is always what the neighborhoods embrace,” he said. “That’s just a fantasy.”
Still, officials on all sides are optimistic.
“Obviously, there’s some interest in getting things done by sharing concerns with each other,” Francisco said, “rather than fighting about it in letters to the editor or at City Hall.”
