’I’m horrified’: JoCo residents fight office park plan that would replace real park

Mike Coffman has, for more than 40 years, lived in a well-to-do Johnson County enclave whose city sign, beneath a canopy of mature oaks and maples, declares the town of 400 residents to be “the most beautiful little city in Kansas.”

These days, Coffman and dozens of other residents in affluent Westwood Hills and neighboring Westwood (population 1,850) fear that the view outside their windows might soon, instead of being beautiful, become downright ugly.

“My children used to play over there,” Coffman said, pointing across the street and across city lines to what is, effectively, Westwood’s only city park, located in a residential neighborhood, but also along a busy strip of Rainbow Boulevard at 50th Street.

The green space known as Joe D. Dennis Park — with its fountain, tennis court and playground — is now, along with contiguous acres, being considered as the spot for a new office and retail development spanning approximately 4 acres.

Renderings of the project, being proposed by the Karbank Real Estate Co. of nearby Mission Woods, would include four buildings at three and four stories tall in colors of blue, red, green and gray, providing 91,000 square feet of office space and 26,000 of retail. Parking would be available for 367 cars, with 60% of spaces below ground.

Part of the deal would include the city using TIF (tax increment financing) funds generated by the project to replace the existing park with a new and larger 3.5-acre park just to the west on the grounds of the former Westwood View Elementary School.

Westwood’s nine-member City Planning Commission is set to consider the project on Sept. 11. Should the commission approve it, Westwood’s mayor and five-member City Council could take it up as early as Oct. 12. City leaders said they are waiting to hear from the planning commission, but the project is believed to have strong support within city hall, including from the city administrator, Leslie Herring.

“I think that if we can work out all the technical details,” Herring said, “I think this would be a huge benefit to the community.”

Neighbors nearest the project are vocally against it, saying the development is too tall and big, its corporate design will mar a residential streetscape, and more office space is hardly necessary in a society where many are working remotely, from home. They hold that city leaders have been too quick to buy into the idea of an office park before considering other options — including selling some of the land, currently zoned for residential, for actual houses.

“I’m horrified, absolutely horrified,” said Karen I. Johnson, a Westwood resident for 57 years. She was mayor of Westwood from 2006 to 2008. She lives two houses away from the site of the proposed development.

“It has no business here,” she said.

The city would need to rezone the land from residential to commercial. If the planning commission approves the plan, under Kansas state law, statute 12-757, certain residents could file a protest petition against the zoning change. In this instance, that would include Westwood residents within 200 feet and non-residents (those in Westwood Hills and Mission Woods) within 1,000 feet.

That equals about 160 property owners, Herring said. If the protest petition is deemed valid, approval of the development would require 75% of the vote of the council and mayor as opposed to a simple council majority.

Coffman conceded he thinks stopping the project is a long shot — so long that some have called him Don Quixote fighting windmills.

“It’s the only legal recourse we have,” he said of the protest petition.

For the last two weeks, he and others have been going door to door in Westwood to inform people about the project. Last week, he found a supporter at the first door he knocked on, across the street from the park.

“Look where I live,” said Sära Keehn, a resident for 25 years. “We have to stop the rezoning.”

Ellen Marsee, 87, of Westwood is among his band of protesters. She lives only a few houses away from the park.

“I’ve been here for 60 years,” she said. “My youngest child was born here. My husband died in this house, My mother died in this house. My hope was that I could live my final years here.

“I’m sick over it. I feel our city has let us down, especially our mayor.”

Marsee worries not only about the size and mass of a corporate development, but also about the increase in traffic that will feed more than 300 parking spaces. She worries about the safety of children headed to the new Westwood View school building a couple of blocks away or the new park that’s being promised to replace the old.

Had the proposed development been designed to have the low-profile cottage-style look similar to the nearby shops in Fairway, or in Brookside, or Westwood Hills on State Line Road or the Shops of Prairie Village off Mission Road, Marsa Swatzell’s objections would hardly be as great.

Swatzell, 68, lives on Rainbow Boulevard one house north of the park. The development would tower above her home, which has sat on land belonging to the Swatzell family since 1897. Generations of the family have seen generations of changes.

“I’m not against development, per se. I’m against it as it stands,” she said of the proposed project. “I’m saying it just doesn’t fit.”

Herring, the city administrator, explained that Westwood leaders have been contemplating the future of the property along Rainbow and 50th Street for nearly a decade.

In 2013, the stone Westwood Christian Church, at 5050 Rainbow Blvd., shut its doors. One year later, Westwood bought the property on a lease-to-purchase agreement for $400,000, on which it still owes approximately $275,000.

The church was demolished in 2020. In 2022, the new Westwood View Elementary School opened at 4935 Belinder Ave., just to the west of the old school located at 2511 W. 50th St. Students from Rushton Elementary School moved into the old building and are expected to be there until their new school is ready for the start of the fall semester in 2024.

In May, Westwood entered into a right of first refusal agreement with the Shawnee Mission school district to purchase the old school for $2.65 million, taking possession next January and leasing it back to the district for $1 per year through July 2024 during the time it is still occupied by the Rushton students.

Should the development plan be approved, Herring said, Karbank would donate the funds to pay off the $275,000 debt on the church. It would also donate the $2.65 million to purchase the school, along with funds to demolish it and grade the property for a future park.

Karbank gets property for its offices and retail. The city of Westwood would get some 3.5 acres west of the development to transform into a larger city park using funds generated from the project through tax increment financing.

“It is, frankly, at no cost to the taxpayers,” Herring said.

Karbank’s plan is to start construction in 2025 and finish within two years.

Johnson, the former mayor, said she plans on speaking and raising several points at the Sept. 11 planning commission hearing. Particularly germane, she said, is a 2017 city master plan that includes specific future uses for the Joe. D. Dennis Park and former church grounds. Uses at that time included a new school, a park, civic uses, or single homes. No mention of an office park.

She points to several passages: “Mixed-use developments and high intensity commercial areas should be directed toward the 47th Street and Rainbow intersection … which can accommodate taller buildings with a denser footprint.”

Also: “Redevelopment projects should have compatible architectural styles, scale of structures, and compatible density to adjacent residential areas.”

As he went door-to-door, Steve Platt of Westwood Hills came across residents who said they were for and against the project. Platt said he would like to see all the area around 50th and Rainbow turned into a nearly 8-acre park.

Farther away, Pascal and Jan Gephardt, Westwood residents for 45 years, both said they were “neutral” on the project.

“Vaguely positive,” Jan Gephardt said, although she is not a fan of the corporate design.

“It preserves a little bit of green space,” she said, then conceded:

“In a place like this, it’s kind of a fantasy to think that there’s going to be no development up there.”