KSHB 41 reporter Braden Bates covers Lee's Summit. Share your stories with Braden.
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A Lee's Summit neighborhood successfully opposed a planned housing development after the city council voted 8-1 against the proposal at Tuesday night's council meeting.
Even with the council's decision, the developer said they're exploring ways to build the project .
Just outside the Kensington Farms neighborhood near County Line and Ward roads are signs promoting single-family and maintenance-provided homes.
The proposed expansion of the neighborhood, called Pathways at Kensington Farms, included rental townhouses among single-family homes and a 55-plus community.
Current residents of the neighborhood said they're against developers building rental properties, saying that's not what they were promised.
"They can't be rentals," Laurie Ward said. "We can't have a big swath of rentals out here."
Ward lives in the Kensington Farms neighborhood and led a petition to stop the development.
Ward said a single page quickly ended up as a four-and-a-half page opposition packet.
"We’re not opposed to development, but we would love to have more stuff out here (Lee's Summit), but not out there (near her neighborhood)," said Ward.
The developer, Petra, is picking up a 20-year-old project and wants to finish what was started.
Ward said the opposition to rentals runs deeper than just preferences on housing types as she showed a sign from her neighbors yard that read, "We know kindness. Thank you good neighbors."
"This was the point.," Ward said. "This is what single-family homes get you. It gets you relationships and closeness," Ward said.
Tyler Burks, the developer behind the project, said he's not giving up despite the council's rejection.
"You don't have success in your business if you just give up on something the first time it gets turned down," Burks said.
Burks said he believes the community didn't fully understand his proposal. He said the build out would be around $220 million.
He estimated the yearly taxes from the development would be around $2 million.
Burks said he wants to better understand the neighborhood's concerns.
"First and foremost, I really want to understand on a deeper level their actual opposition, right? Cause right now, it’s perception, thoughts and emotions that come out,' he said. "But I really want to get to the root of that before I really start making changes," Burks said.
The city council gave Burks 60 days to submit a new proposal.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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