Gateway
The City of Lawrence’s Gateway Project is a multi-decade transformative development initiative with the goal of transforming the city’s downtown through the creation of a new urban neighborhood.
The public sector’s commitment to transportation improvements, brownfield remediation has leveraged significant follow-on private investment. These physical improvements have accelerated economic growth, created new affordable housing, and shaped park destinations for residents.
Gateway Details
Groundwork Lawrence is supporting the City of Lawrence’s efforts to build on this momentum to implement an exciting community planning process to establish a district level plan born from a robust multi-tiered engagement process. This project proposes to develop a bold vision planning for additional layers to the Lawrence Gateway to add to the district’s vitality and support the city’s goal of long-term fiscal stability. Central to the project is developing a collaborative process through which property owners and stakeholders can co-create this vision.
Currently, the Lawrence Gateway is comprised of an 8-acre surface parking lot and a 5-acre riverfront park which are surrounded by the Everett Mill (commercial), the Stone Mill (housing), and the campus of Lawrence General Hospital, and several additional commercial buildings associated with former industrial uses. The vision from 20 years ago was to create a large parking lot to accommodate new uses within deindustrialized mills. This planning process will evaluate parking demand, the potential for solar canopy development in the parking lot to relieve the energy burden of affordable housing residents, and the addition of additional land uses at the Gateway.
