It’s no nightclub, but that’s what neighbors fear for planned Wichita event center

If you’re going to the planning commission meeting on Thursday, you’d better get there early if you’d like a seat.

That’s the advice of the planning department, which has been hearing quite a bit from neighbors of a potential event center near 37th and Woodlawn.

“I just thought that this was something that was needed in Wichita,” Jake Hartman says of the business.

Hartman — no relation to Wink Hartman Sr. — and business partner Nick Mills want to build an event center on 9 acres with a 1-acre pond they have on the north side of 37th Street between Woodlawn and Rock Road.

The two are seeking a planned unit development for what is currently zoned single family residential.

Since they plan to have music and alcohol available for events, they have to apply for a nightclub designation, even though that’s not what they plan. “Nightclub” was mentioned in a notification to neighbors.

“When the letter went out to the neighbors, it could have been anything,” Hartman says. “We got a lot of concerned residents for good reason initially.”

What Hartman and Mills plan is an approximately 325-person-capacity center with a separate smaller building for weddings.

“It would be kind of like a French country (style), white with black trim,” Hartman says of the building. “Think East Coast, Cape Cod-style architecture. . . . Something pretty attractive.”

A neighbor concerned about a “nightclub” alerted a TV station, and Hartman says that exacerbated how his plan is being misconstrued.

“You’d think we’re going to build a strip club in the city limits.”

If the event center isn’t approved, Hartman says he has a background in apartments and condos, so that’s an option.

“That is what we originally thought about for that property.”

If approved at the planning commission, the City Council still would have to approve a zoning change.

Hartman says that if neighbors “had their druthers, (they’d) probably rather not have anything there.”

However, he says that’s probably not going to be an option.

“Land like that in the city is going to be developed into something.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 5:00 AM.