The Prairie Village city council on Monday voted to enact a nine-month moratorium on all rezoning requests for the Mission Valley site and surrounding properties.
The move came as the city issued its formal Request for Proposal seeking a firm to coordinate the public input portion of its comprehensive planning process for the site. A single council member, Diana Ewy Sharp, voted against the measure, which passed 11-1.
Ewy Sharp said she voted against the moratorium because it was part of a process she found redundant. Any rezoning request already requires a public hearing before it’s voted on by the planning commission, Ewy Sharp said, and conducting a comprehensive planning process will cost the city tens of thousands of dollars.
Ewy Sharp also says that she spoke with RED principal Dan Lowe prior to the vote, and was convinced the company wouldn’t move forward with a rezoning request until the “city was ready.”
But the vast majority of the council agreed with member Andrew Wang, who had lobbied to have the zoning moratorium placed even before RED backed out of the agreement with the city to fund the comprehensive planning process, and voted for the measure.
Clearly, though, many community members are still hoping that a rezoning request won’t be necessary, and that the site can remain a school. Lowe told Ewy Sharp that RED and Kansas City Christian planned to meet earlier this week to determine whether a deal to sell the property to the school was feasible. RED spokesman Dave Claflin said Wednesday he had not heard anything about the outcome of that meeting.