When Lawrence city commissioners voted to offer KU a package of tax incentives of up to $94.6 million earlier last week to support construction of the Gateway District, at least three of them were not aware of a $300 million donation for KU Athletics that was to be announced hours later.
Mayor Mike Dever, Vice Mayor Brad Finkeldei and Commissioner Amber Sellers said the gift from KU alum David Booth — which is “among the largest single gifts in the history of college athletics,” according to a news release from KU — would not have changed the way they voted.
Commissioners Bart Littlejohn and Lisa Larsen did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A planning professional who has studied the Gateway District said the process has failed to seek out proper community input, and the KU faculty union said the project is an unfair burden on students and faculty.
“One thing is certain: It’s amazing how much money KU can find when they are actually committed to something,” said Tara Marriage, a member of KU’s faculty union and assistant teaching professor in biology.
Representatives for KU did not respond to questions for this story.
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Kansas Athletic Director Travis Goff hinted at the donation in early July. After commissioners approved the tax breaks Tuesday night, he posted to Twitter again hinting at the gift. The donation was announced just hours after the commission voted to approve the tax incentive package. Of the $300 million donation, $75 million is earmarked for the stadium project.
The Gateway Project’s first phase included renovating much of the KU football stadium and construction of a conference center. That’s on track to be completed this month and cost about $448 million.
Phase 2 of the Gateway Project is proposed to finish the south and east sides of the football stadium, plus develop a large mixed-use district next to the stadium, including an outdoor plaza, hotel, student housing, parking, retail space and more.
An updated presentation from KU included an estimate of $360.7 million for construction of the second phase, bringing the grand total to $808.7 million to complete both phases of the project.
Dever said despite being unaware of the specific donation, he recognized that KU had committed to funding large parts of the stadium with donated money. He said the donation makes the plan actionable and should be celebrated because it will ensure the project can be completed sooner and start generating tax revenue to pay off bonds.
Both he and Finkeldei suggested the decision Tuesday precipitated the donation announcement. Dever said the tax incentives were needed to make the plan a reality. Finkeldei said the privately owned hotel and apartment could not receive donated money eligible for a deduction.
At Tuesday’s meeting, both voted in favor of the package, saying the investment of state funds was a rare opportunity and the project would benefit the community and local economy. They were joined by Littlejohn in supporting the tax breaks, as well as Larsen on all but one component of the tax breaks.
Sellers was the lone vote against some of the tax incentives, expressing concerns over who would win and lose from the project. She said she worried the extra cash flow to KU would burden students and faculty, who would help pay for the community improvement district with an increased tax on campus. She also said she worried about how it would change the area’s neighborhoods.
Some community members previously said the process for neighborhood engagement outlined in an agreement between KU and the city was not completed before Tuesday’s vote.
Dever said he did not see a connection between the neighborhood concerns and the surprise donation, but said he is interested in discussing with KU “the impacts their housing deficit and campus construction projects have had on the adjoining neighborhoods and community at large.”
Pat Peery, a resident near the project site and neighborhood representative on the Gateway District Community Advisory Committee, spoke to the commission Tuesday about concerns neighbors have raised.
In an email, he said neighborhood representatives met last week with the city manager to continue discussions around the issues of traffic management, parking and noise levels.
He said KU’s communication with the neighborhood has been good, but the proper process had not been followed prior to the vote on tax incentives.
Faculty members say community engagement fell short and stadium project reveals KU’s priorities
Ward Lyles, a professor of urban planning and Indigenous studies at the University of Kansas, has spent more than a decade studying how public institutions make decisions about land use. A certified planner and widely recognized expert in his field, Lyles said the process behind KU’s Gateway District project fell far short of the standards of transparency and public engagement that typically guide large developments.
Lyles said the university and KU Endowment bypassed standard practices by relying on media tours, press releases and scripted meetings rather than establishing a steering committee of diverse stakeholders with authority to shape outcomes.
“This process consisted of back-room deals, rushed decisions, press releases, media tours and performative meetings telling the community what is going to happen regardless of their opinions,” Lyles said. “The process did not include comprehensive and unbiased analysis.”
In his view, the absence of independent financial and environmental analysis left unanswered questions about the project’s risks and tradeoffs. A comprehensive review, he said, should have included cost-benefit assessments, traffic and pollution studies and examination of potential housing cost increases. Without that, he said, the initiative reflected a marketing campaign more than community engagement.
Lyles also criticized what he described as emotional manipulation in the rollout, in which project leaders stressed athletic prestige and economic benefits while downplaying costs. By invoking the risk of KU being left behind in college sports without a luxury stadium, officials sidestepped harder conversations about how such spending can divert attention and resources from the university’s academic mission, Lyles said.
Alternative scenarios, he suggested, might have delivered greater long-term benefits. Lyles imagined what an alternative $1 billion fundraising effort could have been used for: scholarships, faculty pay, cultural development and investments in Haskell Indian Nations University and local public schools.
He said KU leaders could have asked athletics donors to set aside a portion of their donations for academic purposes.
“With that in mind, the question again is who knew what, when, and why it was concealed?” Lyles said. “This type of revelation speaks to the influence of extreme wealth on government in general, as well as to what happens when a process has minimal transparency and leaders are not accountable to the community.”
Marriage, with KU’s faculty union, said the announcement of the huge donation speaks louder than the expected project benefits they presented to commissioners.
“After 416 days of contract negotiations, KU’s approach to faculty and academic staff who are fighting for a fair contract is in many ways similar to how KU has treated Lawrencians and the neighborhood Gateway advisory committee – an utter lack of respect and equal dialogue,” Marriage said.
She said the union, called United Academics of KU, was worried about the potential financial strain from what she called top-down decisions.
After more than a year, KU has yet to finalize a contract with the union.
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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.
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