Please Help Us Protect Lawrence's Historic Preservation Ordinance

LPA Members and Friends of LPA:
We need your help. While there is a lot to like in the proposed Downtown Master Plan, which will be considered and probably approved by the City Commission in the coming weeks, it also contains language that we believe inappropriately targets the city’s longtime Historic Preservation Ordinance. We do not believe a 20-year strategic plan is the place to litigate specifics of the Historic Preservation Ordinance, which ensures that our historic built environment maintains its unique character and architectural integrity.

The Preservation Ordinance is in the process of being revised; city staff has been working on it for some time. The revised draft will be entering into a public comment period later this year. There should be a full and transparent process involving stakeholders and the public when we make changes to that ordinance, and LPA will be very active in helping to shape that process. The Downtown Master Plan should not circumvent that public process by prejudging the specific details of what the revised ordinance will provide.

Among other problems with language in the draft downtown plan (see below), a claim is made that historic environs reviews of proposed developments has “stymied" downtown reinvestment. That is a hyperbolic statement. We strongly encourage removal of that statement and any specific recommendations for changes to the Historic Preservation Ordinance from the Downtown Master Plan Draft.

Please feel free to express your opinions about this important issue to the City Commission and to members of the Downtown Master Plan Steering Committee, which is currently working on modifications to the plan to present to the City Commission. Because of increased interest in the plan, the city has extended the community input period until 5 p.m. on June 24, and .has scheduled another virtual meeting of the Downtown Master Plan Steering Committee for 4 p.m. on July 8. You can register for that meeting here.

You can send messages to the Steering Committee and the project consultant in care of Assistant Planning Director Amy Miller at amiller@lawrenceks.org. Amy will forward your comments to the consultant and all Steering Committee members. You can contact the City Commission by sending your comments to Bobbie Walthall, in the office of the City Manager, at bjwalthall@lawrenceks.org. Bobbie will forward your comments to all City Commissioners.

Please consider making your voice heard. We need to be sure that the Master Plan process does not threaten a transparent public review of the Historic Preservation Ordinance.

Thank you,
Dennis Brown
President, LPA

Excerpt from the draft Downtown Master Plan (page 49):