Rezoning of the Southeast corner of Mecalf and 159th in Johnson County, KS, is being proposed. The property is currently Master Planned as all residential.

The Polsinelli law firm is notifying nearby residents that the proposed rezoning to Mixed Use will be discussed at a meeting to be held on Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 6:30 pm at the South Woods Christian church, 16110 Metcalf Ave. Developers, engineers, and architects will be available to discuss the proposed plan. The letter was signed by John D. Peterson.

Meeting Expectations

This is a meeting sponsored by the developers. Usually at such meetings the following messages are delivered to the neighbors:

1. This is a good project

2. This project is compatible with development in the area (whether or not it is) and should not be opposed by neighbors

3. If neighbors were to successfully oppose this, they would get something much worse later

4. This project has so much political and economic support that it would be pointless for neighbors to oppose it, so they should not even try

In addition, the developer will provide a description of the project. In many cases this preliminary description is considerably different from what the developer eventually asks the governing body to approve. A couple of key points to look for are what parcels are being proposed for what kind of zoning, how many square feet of retail/commercial are being requested and how many residential units on how much land are being proposed. In order to show the residential is as low density as possible, the developer typically includes any water catchment ponds, streamways, or other undevelopable land as part of the residential land.

Context

Some points to consider about this rezoning proposal:

• A previous attempt to re-zone this property to Mixed Use was defeated in November, 2002. See articles. Citizens mounted a successful legal protest petition and convinced enough County Commissioners to vote against the proposal.

• In order to lessen the risk of neighborhoods' successful protest petition, developers may divide land and submit separate re-zoning projects. For instance, the residential buffer around the commercial proposal and next to the neighborhood may be submitted as one project and the commercial itself as a second project. The developer can then use his own proposed residential land to help defeat the protest petition against the commercial project. It will be interesting to see if Polsinelli uses this tactic here as they did on their successful rezoning for the Target development near Oak Park Mall.

• The larger picture on this proposal is that Overland Park would very much like to convert 159th into a commercial corridor and build an interchange at 159th and 69 highway. The last major commercialization attempt was the soccer complex proposal at 159th and Antioch near 69 highway. Citizens stopped that proposal based on a County wide vote. It was found out later that soccer proponents spent well over a million dollars pushing the concept. Opponents spent around twenty thousand dollars.

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