City Council sides with neighbors, rejects mixed-use plan in east Wichita
In a rare break with the Planning Commission, Wichita’s City Council has rejected a proposed complex of apartments, office and retail service space proposed at the site of a closed-down school in a historically Black neighborhood in east Wichita.
Siding with neighbors opposed to the plan, the council rejected the Nguyen Senior Village, a proposal for 78 apartments with a gathering center for residents, rental office space and personal service businesses that may have included such uses as a barber shop, beauty salon and laundromat.
The five-acre site is the former location of Holy Savior Catholic Academy and before that, was a public school, Carter Elementary.
The plan proposed by Khanh Kim Nguyen of KN Rental Properties was to use the former school buildings, at 4640 E. 15th St., for the gathering center, office and retail spaces.
The apartments would have been in two new, two-story buildings on what had been the playground. The area is surrounded by single-family homes.
The Planning Commission approved the plan on a unanimous 11-0 vote June 17. The District 1 Advisory Board, made up of area residents, recommended rejection on a unanimous 6-0 vote on July 13.
In both meetings, residents, including former District 1 council member Lavonta Williams, complained of the developer’s management of other properties, including repeated complaints of overcrowding, drugs and violence.
She said she understands the impulse to rezone the property. “You also have to look at the history of the person behind the project,” Williams said.
“She (Nguyen) does own over 100 houses and most of them are in African-American Zip Code areas, simply buying homes, very little repair and then putting people into them,” Williams said after Tuesday’s vote.
In the earlier DAB meeting, Williams confronted Nguyen directly on her record.
“I was involved with the development of the city’s nuisance ordinance, because we had a shooting in one of your homes and then in another,” Williams said. “They may not have much in their neighborhood association, but they are proud of what they have. We do not want gunshots all the time and all types of activity.”
Longtime community activist Maxine Bostic, former president of the Ken Mar Neighborhood Association and former membership chair of Wichita Independent Neighborhoods, attended Tuesday’s meeting and said she prayed for Tuesday’s outcome.
Bostic said Nguyen’s rentals draw a rough and undesirable element to the area, and that she and others have been shot at by Nguyen’s tenants in the past.
“There has been gang activity,” she said. “The neighbor behind me and our house have been shot in by people that live in her properties.’
Nguyen missed Tuesday’s council meeting, which she thought would be at 6 p.m. instead of 9 a.m. She said she plans to refile for the zone change.
“We can do that again,” she said.
She said the complaints are misplaced and some involved properties she doesn’t even own.
“There are no problems with my properties,” she said. “Whoever said that, they’re wrong.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2021 at 4:00 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported Maxine Bostic’s former position with Wichita Independent Neighborhoods
