Planning for a new subdivision next to the high school will move forward after Monday’s City Commission meeting.
The commission approved the request to rezone the land from Douglas County agriculture to single-family residential. This was necessary after 97 acres at N. 1200 Road was annexed into city limits in September. It is likely the rest of the land will also be rezoned in the future as drawings show the remaining land used for multifamily and duplex housing.
At this time, the about 40 acres approved for rezoning will contribute about 118 homes to the new Shadow Ridge North subdivision. The project is being planned by Alcove Development.
The new neighborhood will connect to Shadow Ridge via Fir Street, and there is an extension of south Fir Street to west 20th Street also included in the preliminary plans. Fir will serve as the north/south connector for this area.
The preliminary plat application was also approved with several recommendations. The city wants a clearer understanding of what land residents are responsible for in the right of ways and easements, as well as a revised preliminary plat document to ensure that open space is identified as part of the subdivision regulations.
After the Planning Commission meeting, the city reached out to Evergy to follow-up about placing a road under power lines. City Manager Kevyn Gero said Evergy would not allow the east/west collector road to exist under overhead power lines parallel with the easement.
Gero said they would also work with the developer to possibly plan a park or green space near the water tower and who would maintain it.
Commissioner Tim Bruce said he was interested to hear more about Evergy’s stance because it seems like it had always been the city’s intention to make another connection from east to west.
“So I’d like to really understand what that means and what our options are because if we don’t make that connection, we catastrophically failed at planning,” Bruce said.
Mayor Tim Reazin agreed there may be a need for another connector to make sure there is not more congestion on 20th Street.
Reazin said it is important to plan ahead and make sure decisions make sense for the growing town. This sets precedent to change and what has been historically plotted out as a road, he said.
“So I just want to make sure as we’re doing this that we get all those questions asked before we even approve this, before it gets too far,” Reazin said. “This is the planning of our city — how many other Evergy connections or Evergy power lines that’s going to have effects throughout the city in the future as we plan for this?”
Superintendent Stu Moeckel, who attended Monday night’s meeting, said the road that goes next to the high school and down to the Ed Tech building will be continued down to give students another exit from the school and help manage traffic needs. The road will connect to 20th Street.
“With your RAISE grant, putting a road there will allow us to tie into that road with a private drive like we have going into the high school, thus giving our students, faculty, visitors another way to go into the school that will alleviate, we believe, some of the traffic issue when school’s released at any point,” Moeckel said.
The Planning and City Commissions will see another plat application as the process moves forward, and will have to approve those before the project continues.
In other business, Reazin said he met with Eudora FFA about its request to increase the number of chickens they are allowed to have. The team hopes to get 10 more chickens, meaning they would have 20.
The goal is to provide eggs for the culinary program and sell eggs to make money to keep the program going, Reazin said. The group may be exempt from the city’s code for education purposes if they complete the permit process.
The city also received an award for the work on 10th Street shared-use path. City staff will go to Dodge City this week to accept the award.
Assistant City Manager Zack Daniel said the city heard back from the secretary of Commerce and was given the green light to move forward with the next steps of creating the rural housing incentive district. The city recently submitted the housing needs assessment.
Parks and Recreation Director Sally Pennington said the city’s candy cane hunt is Saturday. The event will start at 10 a.m. at Lucy Kaegi Park. Kids can hunt for hundreds of hidden candy canes.
The city will also sponsor the food for the next Feeding Eudora from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Dec. 20 at the Community Center, Gero said. Feeding Eudora is also partnering with Eudora Lions Club for the Angel Tree program.
Reach reporter Sara Maloney at [email protected].
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