Planning commission recommends denial of daycare special-use permit at Leawood Commons

The Leawood Planning Commission voted to recommend denial of a special use permit and preliminary plan for a proposed commercial daycare at 11301 Ash Street in the Leawood Commons development (case 84-25). The commission’s recommendation will be forwarded to the governing body.

Planner Taylor Burt summarized the proposal: the applicant seeks to convert an existing one-story, 13,346-square-foot vacant office building (formerly a doctor’s office) into a commercial daycare. The applicant proposed operating hours of 7 a.m.–6 p.m. Monday–Friday and a maximum on-site enrollment of 160 children at any given time (the applicant’s state license would allow up to 200 children). The preliminary plan proposes a single principal outdoor play area of roughly 2,900 square feet on the west side of the building; the eastern play area previously shown in an earlier narrative was removed after neighbor feedback. The applicant also proposed a four-foot fence around large portions of the building, added doors and a locked gate system with emergency-key knock box, and submitted a traffic study. Public works and fire reviewed the plans and provided memos included in the packet.

Several neighbors and nearby business representatives opposed the proposal at the commission public hearing. Speakers who said they have lived adjacent to the site for decades described expectations set when the office park was developed — including a promised berm and wide landscape buffer that, they say, was not built — and expressed concern about increased traffic, constrained parking, sight-line and road-safety risks at the nearby Ash/Knoll/113th intersection, and noise impacts from outdoor play. Several nearby business owners said existing on-lot parking is already heavily used and that daycare drop-off/pick-up activity would compress available spaces and exacerbate congestion in the lot and on adjacent streets.

Applicant Will Buchanan and staff described site improvements and said the applicant is open to additional landscaping and to working with staff on buffering; the applicant noted the site reuses an existing building and that staff had not identified insurmountable safety issues in initial reviews.

Commissioners acknowledged the community need for childcare but concluded that the proposed use does not fit the existing office-park character and raised persistent concerns about traffic, parking and impacts to adjacent residences. Commissioner McGurn moved to recommend denial of case 84-25; Commissioner Fishman seconded. The motion carried by voice vote and the commission recommended denial to the governing body.