Special Edition
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
No.1
The University of Kansas—Lawrence. Kansas
City
Wednesday, August 20,1975
Commission weighs issues
By LYNN PEARSON
Kansas Staff Reporter
Lawrence appears to be a tranquil community. However, a five-member city commission addresses itself weekly to keep the calm nature of the community.
Issues like the placement of the city maintenance garage raised considerable controversy in the community last year and the decision to allow a door to him, but finally, this summer, the city and the east Lawrence neighborhood compromised on a plan placing the garage at 12th St. and Haskell Ave, and designing the north走廊 of the garage for neighborhood use.
RESOLUTION OF THIS type of controversy takes a lot of time. The commission took the garage location decision to establish of east Lewland seeking their approval.
In June, the East Lawrence Improvement
garage was built to serve for the
garage in their neighborhood.
This ended more than a year's controversy. The past commission had voted to
locate the garage at 2nd and Indiana streets. However, an unusually strong protest from the citizens in the Old West Lawrence and Pinckney neighbors caused the new commission to reconsider and look for a new location.
The commission has passed an ordinance condemning, for the construction of the garage, property owned by Oville Ray, 818 S. Fremont St., in acquiring the land sometime in September.
WITH THE NEW C'TY commission elected in April, the commission is for the first time composed of a majority of east coast Democrats. The former Carl Mibke, 1208 Delaware St., and Donald Binns, 1023 New York St., and holdover commission, 415 E. 190th St., and lawrence E.
New commissioner Marine Argeringer,
325 Park Hill Terre., and Mayor Barkley
Clark, 1511 Crescent Rd., round out the
commission.
Lawrence and connect downtown with the proposed U.S. 969 bypass at Lawrence.
"I'm not persuaded that the Haskell Loop is the best thing for the people of east Lawrence," Mibeeck said. "Those community development funds were earmarked to improve this part of town's transportation system.
"It will eventually mean that the territory on the west of the loop will deteriorate and become too small."
City Manager Buford Watson said the Haskell Loop was necessary because there were no arterial streets running north and south in east Lawrence.
Mibek said that the land would not be rezoned commercial by this commission, but that there was nothing to prevent a future commission from rezoning the land.
The loop will be two lane and the initial plans were included in the 1964 comprehensive plan. The old commission approved the loop, but the new commission will be putting the project to a vote in the fall.
Clark said three votes would allow the court to proceed with acquiring right of way for the protect.
He said there would probably be several neighborhood meetings this fall on the
"I don't think that it is politically or
socially wrong to say of way and
suddenly back off," Clark said.
ONE OF THE BIGGEST issues before the city commission during the summer was enforcement of the city's minimum housing code.
In July, Ed Covington, city minimum housing code inspector, said that Watson was not involved in a case belonging to Daniel S. Ling, associate professor of physics. Watson denied Covington's allegations, but conceded that the housing code had been inefficiently enforced.
Covington later resigned, saying that he could not perform his job effectively under the present policies and under the present city administration.
The new commission is vitally concerned with bringing the housing in the Hill Target Area up to standard. The Hill Target Area is east of the campus and contains 199 houses. About 150 of these have been brought up to the code.
PENCE STANDS ALONE among the commissioners in his opposition to housing inspection. At a commission meeting in June, Pence said that as long as the condition of a house wasn't dangerous to neighboring residents it was business but the person who lived there.
Mibock and a committee of citizens developed a new housing code during the Reagan administration to older homes. The commissioners and Watson said they thought this code would be more specific, more easily understood by the public, and more efficiently enforced by the city than the old code.
MIBECK SAID HE and his committee had tried to eliminate things from the code that didn't directly affect the health and safety of the occupant.
"For example, on the question of proper ventilation," Mibek said, "in the older houses as long as each room has a window, it doesn't matter what size it is."
The only windows that will have to meet dimension requirements will be those that might be used for a fire escape such as those in a basement or in attic apartment, he said.
Many of these inflexible requirements will not appear in the final housing code which probably will be adopted by the city commission this fall, Mibeck said.
AS FAR AS ENFORCING the code, the city has determined that it has the authority to seek warrants to enter house when the owner has refused inspection, providing the property is within a designated inspection area such as the Hill Target Area.
The warrants would be sought to enter rental properties, rather than owner oc-
Currently, the city is reinspecting a number of houses in the hill area and, ac-
See CITY COMMISSION page 4
Mavor Barkley Clark
Staff photo by DON PIERCE
City plan to be versatile, lasting
By EYNNT LADSON
Kansan Staff Reporter
By LYNN PEARSON
Comprehensive planning for cities and councils taking on a new importance in the region.
Today, even more than in the 1960s when the federal government attached numerous funding strings to the comprehensive plan, a good 10 to 20 year plan is used daily by city planning departments to determine the effective way to use land within the city.
WITH LAWRENCE'S 1947, comprehensive plan sadly outdated, the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission is reviewing a new commission to re-appoint a planning consultant to do a plan for the rural areas in Douglas County.
It has taken Ron Jones, a planning
sultant from Lenexa who was hired to
execute the plan, and his staff about two
years ago. He will draft the
drafts and prepare the final components.
Dick McClanathan, city-county planner, said the comprehensive plan was basically based on local conditions and land use such as transportation, streets, appearance of the city, economic and population forecasts, housing, commercial growth, parks, schools and capital im-
WITH 59-H 50-federal-local funding, the plan will cost a total of $32,000 to complete. Funds from the federal Department of Education, the Development Dept., administered through the state of Kansas.
The proposed comprehensive plan differs
in many ways from the 1964 plan, but the major difference, McClanathan said, is that the new plan will depend heavily on the choice of control schemes which will be the primary source of direction.
The old plan was centered on a map of the city that incorporated, by symbols and use of color, the plan's projections and land use recommendations.
City Manager Buford Watson said the 1964 plan was never adopted by the city commission and was used by only the planning department for zoning and land development decisions.
Mike Davis, chairman of the Lawrence Douglas County Planning Commission, said, "A two dimensional map such as was used in the 1964 plan is static. This is an
unreasonable standard to measure and direct the growth of dynamic conditions
WITH THE NEW PLAN, in addition to guidelines contained on the map, there will be a flexibility in the text to manage changing conditions, Davis said.
"This will be the basis upon which all land use decisions will be made for the next 20 years."
The life expectancy of the proposed comprehensive plan is 20 years. All goals and objectives contained in the plan extend to the year 1985.
MeChanan said that with consentient updating the plan could last much longer.
See COMPREHENSIVE PLAN page 4
The Free State Opera House in the mild-1930s, when it was the Dickinson Theater.
Archives photo
Free State Opera House holds swinging memories
By KEN STONE Kansas Staff Reporter
Many of the old buildings in Lawrence suffer from a kind of senility.
BUT ONEOLD BUILDING—the Free State Opera House at 642 Massachusetts St—is almost 120 years old this year and appears as a spiralling today as when it was the scene of lively debates in the 1860s or movie showings in the Roaring Twenties.
they nave forgot their original function and turned into either cheap apartments for indiscriminate students or dingy warehouses for abandoned junk. Some face ultimate humiliation: demolition by the city.
Despite raids, burnings, accidents and the vagaries of depression, the building at 492 W. Broadway was the first to be destroyed.
The history of the building begins with the founding of Lawrence.
In 1854 a company of anti-slavery advocates from New England arrived near what is now Mount Oured and started a city, Amos Lawrence was the leader of the company, and the city was named after him.
THE SITE WHERE THE Free State Opera House now stands was first occupied that year by a hardware store. It was an unexciting wood-frame structure owned by the Allan and Gilmore firm. And it gave little indication then of the center for
student social activity it was to become later.
But five years later, on August 21, 1883, a fanatic band of rebel allies led by William Clarke Quantrill attacked Lawrence. The leader was a wooden building was burned to the ground.
By 1858 a second story had been added and the offices of a vodiferous little abolitionist newspaper, the Lawrence Weekly Tribune, soon occulted it.
Poole, who operated a meatpacking plant in the basement, was joined by Dwight Thatcher, who edited the newly founded Lawrence Republican, in occupying the building.
By 1870 the building had become a center of Lawrence social life and a spot for political gatherings. Speeches by an avid abolitionist, Anna Dickinson, and by Horace Greeley, the idolized editor of the New York Tribune, marked debate and conversation.
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL Edwin Poole came to the rescue of the building, however, and in 1888 the ruins of the hardware store were replaced with a two-story brick
The building had been given the name of the apartment's supper, raffles and dugouts were held there.
J. D. BOWERSOCK, a local politician in businessman who had been mayor of Lakewood.
In the days when vaduilleva was in full
play, the ball was a popular place of
entertainment.
state senator, bought Liberty Hall in 1885 and converted it into a plovish家.
Frank March was the first manager of the playhouse and Fay Templeton, a popular playwright.
But faulty wiring in the building resulted in a fire on Feb. 18, 1911, and the building was reduced to ashes, with damage estimated at $25,000.
Two times the building had been destroyed, and two times the building was rebuilt.
On Jan. 22, 1912, the Liberty Hall, now
the Opera House, was
dedicated by the mayor
THE LAWRENCE DAILY Journal-World
opening night festivities
with these glowing exhibits
"The finest theater for any town of the size of Lawrence was opened, the building having been built by J. D. Bowerrock. The theater was completed in 1857" Cecil Lean and Florence Hollowrock as leads.
"The opening night, the audience sat and marveled at the beauty of the building, and between acts Major Bishop appeared on the stage and told just what the budget was for them. This thanks to the city, formally, to Mr. Bowersock, and read letters of appreciation from the
See FREE STATE OPERA page 8