Reflections on the Battle of Reflections on the Battle of New Boston Crossing
Disclaimer: This project was recently renamed “Ten59,” making it more difficult for opponents to follow.
Melinda Ball, an organizer against New Boston Crossing, first became aware of the project after the land was annexed into Lawrence city limits in March 2023, a decision that required unanimous approval from both the City and Douglas County.
“Once the land was annexed, I started keeping an eye on the property,” she said. Eventually, a public notice sign appeared, confirming her suspicions that a large-scale project was underway. Someone was vying for development of the wetlands.
Others began finding out about the development through the Lawrence Times, social media and word of mouth. This issue was gladly taken on by the group “Save the Wakarusa River Valley.”
Researching the Project
For the organizers, the first step in researching New Boston Crossing was relentless information gathering.
“Internet searching was the go-to,” Melinda said. Early on, she connected with Anthropocene Alliance, a national network focused on environmental justice and floodplain development. Through that network, she connected with Dr. Phillip Dustan, a marine ecologist in Charleston, South Carolina, who helped popularize the term “fill and build,” a strategy developers use to raise land elevations in floodplains to bypass regulations. Dustan later provided expert testimony during the March 2024 City Commission meeting on NBC’s rezoning.
Dominique Sexton, fellow organizer against NBC, echoed the intensity of the research phase. “I just went crazy on the Google searches,” she said. The challenge quickly became how to parse and translate the overwhelming volume of technical documents, permits, and legal jargon into information the public could understand.
Identifying Who’s Behind the Project
A major part of the group’s work involved identifying the entities tied to the development. Sexton emphasized that public records are essential tools.
“Property viewers, deed records, mortgage filings…those are your best friends,” she said. By tracing addresses and ownership histories, the group was able to connect companies to parent developers. Although New Boston Crossing is owned by 3500 Iowa Development LLC, deed records and mailing addresses tie the project back to larger entities such as Equisset or Lange Real Estate. They have also found that Sporting Kaw Valley, plans to put near $50 million into the project to develop more soccer fields in the area.
Kansas Open Records Act (KORA) and Kansas Open Meetings Act (KOMA) requests have also been critical for uncovering information that is not otherwise publicly shared.
Additionally, due to the City’s Land Development Code, certain actions, like a local floodplain development permits and written interpretations, are not released to the public and are not open for public input, comment, or question. This is because the Land Development Code approved by the City of Lawrence classifies these actions as purely administrative. In order to challenge these actions, one must have standing and under court interpretations of the Kansas law, this translates to having direct adjacent property and potential financial losses. Community members can bring up legitimate concerns and still be hamstrung by the law, preventing these concerns from having any action taken on them. This is how one development sets a precedent for other developers to use the same tactics.
Red Flags and Regulatory Workarounds
The group recommends showing up consistently to public meetings, building connections through social media, and being unafraid to ask questions.
“We know who’s interested in the project and why,” Sexton said. That includes the local Chamber of Commerce, developers with a history of similar projects in Wichita, and institutions like Haskell Indian Nations University, given the site’s proximity to land with potential undiscovered burials from the boarding school era.
Developers, she warned, often attempt to improve their public image by falsely claiming partnerships. New Boston Crossing developers have falsely claimed that a local non-profit Native Lands Restoration Collaborative was part of the project and this is categorically untrue. Sexton believes that they claimed this because they knew Native Lands is a favorable non-profit for restoration in our region. “It’s a good look.” She stated “They’ve also claimed that they’re working with folks from Haskell and the local Indigenous community and again this is completely false, but it’s good PR.” She suggests when developers use tactics like this to call them on their lies to see what happens. See how often they lie and how they talk about the project and how much they care for residents’ concerns. “Phil Struble and Bundy said to our faces that ‘money makes the world go around’ when we told them the public did not want this development.” Perdue added.
Sexton has also noticed developers’ strategy of co-opting language from their opposition. For example, The New Boston Crossing’s number one claim is that they’re helping the environment and they’re environmentally friendly while they seem to follow the bare minimum legal requirements for the city of Lawrence. For example, the developer is claiming that they’re adding roughly 70 acres of greenspace, a move unprecedented in the City of Lawrence. What they’re not saying is that roughly 54 of those 70 acres are legally undevelopable.
“Something else that’s come up in our meetings, is the idea of consent,” says Perdue, “because basically, this developer has been trying to push this on the people of Lawrence for over 10 years now, and we keep saying no, and he keeps trying to push it forward, so it’s really disrespectful, to say the least. He’s really not respecting the will, or the autonomy of this community. He’s not even from here, so, yeah, it’s pretty offensive on that level.
The inherent fact of the developer being from out of town isn’t the issue. The issue is that right before the developer first attempted to get this land annexed, the City had dealt with a decades-long fight over the South Lawrence Trafficway (SLT). The fight was incredibly public and highlighted the constant issue of Indigenous Peoples losing their right to self-determination and preservation of land and culture to the never ending drum of “progress”. Still, all of this was ignored and the developer continued on anyway. We feel as if this developer has come to our community, saw an opportunity to make a quick buck and didn’t even do the bare minimum research into how our community would respond. He simply used our community members and our local governance’s necessity for housing to dictate what we wanted.
Ball added “They got a lot of pushback the last decade or so, because they were presenting it for commercial use. And then they dropped that affordable housing word, and that got them right through the door, easy-peasy, and now they’re turning back into their commercial endeavor. The issue around weaponizing language lands on “affordable housing” Ball saying that it’s like a Trojan horse when developers are seeking approval. “Developers can move along projects stating that this will provide affordable housing when it doesn’t.” But that seemed to be the magic word to finally move their plans for development forward.” She laments “here we are, and now this project has zero housing in it, and it’s heavy commercial … which is what they wanted in the first place” and “Because you can’t make money off affordable housing, but you can get projects through saying it will help with affordable housing.” While affordable housing is an issue that she Perdue and Sexton agree is incredibly important, they acknowledge that there are other tracts of land surrounding Lawrence that would have less of an environmentally devastating impact.
It appears that part of the issue with County Commissioners following the lead of their constituents is that they don’t want to hold this landowner hostage from selling their land, an issue that can be partisanly reversed when looking at other developments around the state. She reflects that one of the commissioners stated “well, it’s gonna get developed either way, so you might as well just agree to it.”
One of the clearest warning signs, according to organizers, is when developers present bare-minimum legal compliance as environmental stewardship. When we reached out to the Corps of Engineers, they had not yet been contacted, although they should have been, by the developers. At the time the water was considered continuously flowing and therefore protected by the Corps of Engineers and ceasing the development.
“They say they’re helping the environment, when they’re just meeting the lowest requirements and acting like it’s a favor,” Sexton explained.
NBC, in particular, has benefited from regulatory rollbacks. After the 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision and subsequent Army Corps guidance, the developer no longer needs a Section 404 permit to fill more than 2.5 acres of wetlands because the wetlands lack a “continuous surface connection.” As a result, there is no requirement to consult tribes or undergo federal environmental review.
The group has also found that, floodplain regulations are being sidestepped through the FEMA CLOMR process, which allows developers to raise land elevations, literally redefining the floodplain to avoid city restrictions.
Educating the Public
Keeping the community informed and energized has been challenging. The process is complex, technical, and constantly shifting as developers revise plans and change meeting times.
“This particular project has changed forms so many times, they just basically adapt it in order to get things approved, then they change everything again,” says Perdue, “ and so it’s been really complicated to follow, and folks like Melinda are doing a great job at keeping up with all of the changes that they’ve thrown at us.” This statement highlights the need for dedicated individuals to continue gathering data and a central place for information and updates to be found. In their case, a website has worked very well.
Despite that, recent efforts have shown impact. More than 30 people spoke against the project at the most recent Planning Commission meeting, generating nearly an hour and a half of public comment. Many attendees learned about the meeting through social media, underscoring its importance as an organizing tool.
Both Melinda and Perdue stress how diversity has helped elevate their ability to react and organize around the issue of New Boston Crossing. “. We have a lot of different ages, from people in their 20s to 80s,” stated Perdue. They have people who’ve been organizing for a really long time, some who are new to it, and a lot of varying political perspectives all with varying talents that they can use to continue the fight. You don’t have to doeverything, a lot of people engaging in small things is a huge help to the cause.
Can Land Be Protected Before Development?
Ball takes this moment to circle back on planning. Stating that it is “a big deal” that a community pays attention to their comprehensive plan, which should be updated about every couple of years. “I can’t overstate this. This is a big deal on the south side of the area of Lawrence, which is what we’re dealing with. It’s also a big deal on the north side with the big solar complex. Both of them, they kind of mirror each other in a lot of ways in the fact that the comprehensive plan, which is not a legal binding document.” But it does reflect the communities interest looking to their future development. This to her is a sticking point as all of the, floodplain, which would include the wetlands, on the property, is to be designated open space, which is just a classification saying it would just be open, non-developed space. And so, the developers of New Boston Crossing have taken an interest in amending the comprehensive plan.
Both Ball and Perdue acknowledged the difficulty of proactively protecting land in Kansas, where most property is privately owned. Conservation easements are one option, Melinda noted, but they require willing landowners. Larger solutions, such as land trusts, moratoriums, or public acquisition face systemic and financial barriers. “It’s too big of a scope for me to answer,” Sexton said plainly. “But developing floodplains is clearly not ideal, and yet here we are.”
Takeaways
From leaked Facebook posts to federal court decisions, the fight over New Boston Crossing highlights how modern development often advances: quietly, quickly, and through regulatory gaps. It also shows how persistent community members - armed with public records, expert networks, and diverse voices in chorus together - can slow that process and demand accountability.
The Wakarusa River remains at the center of this struggle, not just as a body of water, but as a shared responsibility.
- Visit the Save the Wakarusa River Valley Website Here: bit.ly/krc-wakarusa
- Listen to the podcast here: kansasruralcenter.org/podcast/swrv