Douglas County commissioners voted 4-1 Wednesday to extend a permit by one year for a planned solar farm north of Lawrence, as a court injunction is still blocking progress on the facility’s construction.

Commissioners Patrick Kelly, Karen Willey and Shannon Reid initially gave their approval to a conditional use permit for the Kansas Sky Energy Center in April 2024 after multiple hourslong meetings filled with divided public comment.

The permit would have expired next month if commissioners didn’t issue the extension.

Commissioners Gene Dorsey and Erica Anderson, who joined the commission in January 2025, split their votes on the extension Wednesday, with Dorsey joining the other three commissioners in voting in favor and Anderson voting opposed.

“Personally, I was not party to a commission that actually moved this forward, so I don’t see that my vote is needed,” Anderson said.

The project, a 159-megawatt solar farm, would be built, owned and operated by Evergy with designs provided by Savion LLC, a division of Royal Dutch Shell based out of Kansas City. The companies plan to use 1,105 acres in Grant Township, north of Lawrence, for the project.

Anderson asked several times why an Evergy representative who had stood up to answer questions was not listed on the paperwork for the request. Brianna Baca, development director at Savion, answered.

“We do have an agreement with Evergy to own and operate the project, and we’ve been very open with that, and it’s pending regulatory approval, and they are listed as part of the application,” Baca said. “Pending regulatory approval, they will be the owner-operator.”

Anderson said Evergy rates are increasing, new data centers are coming online and the commission’s Douglas County constituents can’t continue to pay the costs. She said Evergy and its shareholders will benefit from the project while Douglas County residents bear the burden.

Though the permit extension was approved, the project still won’t move forward for a while.

Attorneys representing a group including Grant Township, the North Lawrence Improvement Association and more than a dozen plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the county in 2024, aiming to block the project.

Many opponents at past commission meetings, including some of the individuals involved in the lawsuit, have said they support solar energy and believe it is important but that the proposed location is not the right place for it.

In December of that year, Douglas County District Judge James McCabria granted an injunction that halted progress of the project while the lawsuit is still pending.

Per county zoning regulations, the Kansas Sky Energy Center conditional use permit would have expired two years after it was first granted since there has been no construction progress.

Matthew Gough, an attorney for the proposed facility, filed the request in December 2025 for commissioners to extend the permit for another year. At the time, McCabria had scheduled a bench trial for April 2026 that has since been pushed to November, with a pretrial conference set for September.

“Approval of this request would not result in any detriment to the County, while denial would cause undue harm to the Applicant by effectively terminating the project,” Gough wrote in the request.

Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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