Westwood voters will weigh in on controversial park sale, settling months-long dispute
Residents of Westwood will vote this spring on the sale of a city park as part of a controversial commercial development project, a win for citizens who had pushed for the effort to get voter approval through a petition and a months-long legal battle.
Westwood City Council members voted Thursday to put the question of whether the city would sell Joe D. Dennis Park before the public on the April 1 ballot. The election will take place by mail, city officials said.
“We won,” said Beckie Brown, one of the citizens who pushed for the vote, in a statement released by her attorneys. “Democracy won. The City is finally doing what we’ve been asking them to do for over a year: hold an election.”
In a statement, Ryan Kriegshauser, one of Brown’s attorneys, said in recent months that Westwood citizens had been “bullied, threatened, and shut out of conversations” around the sale of the park.
“One woman’s tenacity all the way through a Court of Appeals victory finally broke the dam,” he said. “Because of one ‘mere’ citizen, voters will have the final say on what happens to their park.”
The city has been pursuing a project that would see Johnson County-based Karbank Real Estate Company build an office and retail development on the land off Rainbow Boulevard. The site also includes the former Westwood View Elementary School, as well as a piece of vacant city property previously occupied by the Westwood Christian Church.
The company agreed to pay off city debt on the church property and offered to buy the school property, which would be redeveloped into a new park.
The decision to give voters a say on the sale comes as part of a winding saga that included an effort from citizens to halt the sale through the petition process and an appeal by Brown to the Kansas Court of Appeals, which sent the matter back to a Johnson County judge for further proceedings in a ruling last month.
“Simply put, this spring, the residents of Westwood will have the opportunity to vote on this question, as has been requested by many in petitions, legal briefings, websites, yard signs, and social media posts,” Mayor David Waters wrote in an announcement about the vote. “The City Council trusts that—regardless of the outcome—the results of this election will be respected by the residents of Westwood. As Mayor, I can certainly commit that the City will respect this process and the ultimate decision made by our Westwood community.”
Waters wrote that city officials originally believed it would be “legally questionable” to hold a vote on the sale but said that based on the ruling by the appeals court last month, city officials now believe they can accept the validity of the petitions and will place the question before voters.
“Although it has taken longer than we might have hoped to reach this point,” he wrote, “the City respects the decision of the Court, the requests made by the petitioners, and the decision to be made by the residents of Westwood.”
This story contains previous reporting from Sarah Ritter and Eric Adler.
This story was originally published December 15, 2024 at 3:41 PM.
