On Oct. 21, the proposition to rezone the East Park Neighborhood area located at 300 N. 11th St. and 1020 Leavenworth St. failed in a 3-2 vote.

The rezone was intended to allow space for new duplexes to address the need for new housing, Mel Borst said, a resident of the East Park neighborhood.

“They thought there wasn’t enough housing in the area, but whenever I drive around, I see a ton of houses for rent and for sale,” Borst said. “Not only this, but these homes are historic. There’s houses in this neighborhood dating all the way back to 1895.”

On the surface, the rezone was inspired by “a few guys,” but their idea was encouraged by the city, Borst said.

“There were a few city employees that were especially passionate about making ‘improvements’ to the city, specifically in this neighborhood, but once the city caught wind of it, they really encouraged these commissioners to present and promote the idea,” Borst said.

Historical homes in the neighborhood

Several of these homes, built in the late 1800s, hold many historical benchmarks of Manhattan, according to the Manhattan/Riley County Preservation Alliance Newsletter.

The J. F. and Julia O’Daniel House, a two-story home with a tower located at 1000 Leavenworth St., was built in 1895. The architect may have been John D. Walters, who started the architecture program at Kansas State Agricultural College. The J. W. Jennings House, a “neat” two-story frame house built for an estimated cost of $800 in 1898, is located at 1015 Leavenworth St. 

History continued to write its story in the East Park neighborhood in the 1900s. The Frank and Mary Butterfield House, a two-story home complete with eight rooms, a bathroom, city water and a furnace that heated the house with hot air, was erected in 1901. The Frank and Mary Butterfield Cottage, a Craftsman-style bungalow featured a bathroom, electricity, city water and a cistern and a furnace that heated the house with hot air. This home was built in 1903 at 909 Leavenworth St. by the couple as an investment property, as the Butterfield family lived on the same street. 

The Ernest and Marguerite Nichols House is a lofty home featuring a main floor with five large rooms, a second level with six bedrooms and a bathroom and a large porch floored with hexagonal tiles. The Nichols’ home, located at 1031 Leavenworth St., was the most expensive house built in 1905, costing $8,000 to construct. Ernest Nichols became the fifth president of Kansas State Agricultural College in 1899, serving until 1909. 

The Alvin R. and Lucinda Springer House, a large two-story structure with a limestone foundation, a wrap-around front porch and eight rooms located at 1016 Leavenworth St. in 1907, was designed by Henry Winter. The E. J. and May Moffitt House, located at 928 Leavenworth St. and built in 1907, featured impressive ionic columns and subsidiary columns that were said to be “cyclone proof” and is massive, unique and gratifying to all lovers of art in architecture.

The Harry A. and Eva Fowler House, located at 931 Leavenworth St. is a large Craftsman style house built in 1907 featuring nine rooms and a full front porch with a limestone foundation. The Frank W. and Edith Hinds House, a “first-class” two-story residence on the corner of Ninth and Leavenworth Street, contains eight rooms and features a wraparound porch reportedly built for $4,000 in 1907. 

The Harry A. Fowler House, built in 1908 at 927 Leavenworth St., contained eight rooms, featured a bathroom with hot water, and had hot and cold cistern water upstairs and downstairs. 

The Will and Eva Wareham House, located at 824 Leavenworth St. and built in 1910, featured a front porch with vertical pieces of Indiana brownstone alternating with native limestone and laid with yellow, gray, green and white tile in a criss-cross pattern, and may be one of only a few houses in town with a tiled porch from this era. The interior features built-in bookcases and a settee, and a fireplace faced with glacial granite boulders. During the 1920s, the Warehams invited Milton Eisenhower to live with them at 824 Leavenworth while he attended his junior year at Kansas State Agricultural College. In 1943, Eisenhower became the first native Kansan and the first alumnus to serve as president of K-State, and Milton’s brother, Dwight, was elected to serve as U.S. president, 1953-1961. 

The George and Rosa Hammond House, built in 1913 at 300 N. 11th St., was a Queen Anne-style home featuring a stone wrap-around front porch and a pair of second-floor parade porches. The Alden and Emma Huse House, a one-and-a-half-story bungalow, with a garage added two years later, was built in 1916 at 1020 Leavenworth St. The I. Lee and Violet Inskeep House was a classic two-story home built in 1927 at 1006 Leavenworth St.

The refuted rezoning justifications

The initial proposal for the rezoning was presented for a vote on Sept. 16, 2025, but was sent back to the City Commission because it had not met the criteria for presentation to the city at that point, Borst said. 

“The city has a series of criteria that they have to meet in order to be recommended by the planning committee and approved by the City Commission,” Borst said. “One of these criteria is the 14-day period for nearby residents to refute the proposal.” 

This criterion point allows citizens living within 200 feet of the site in question a chance to protest the rezoning decision by reviewing the proposal and bringing their concerns to light for consideration before moving forward. 

“They tried to sneak this past us without allowing us this period because the City Commission clearly didn’t want us to protest,” Borst said. “The city manager said that her goal was to cut that period out as soon as possible because the Chamber of Commerce wanted to speed up the approval process.”

The neighborhood residents, including long-time residents and members of the East Park Neighborhood Coalition, Kathy Dzewaltowski, Linda Glasgow, Cindy Pitts, Sara Fisher, Judine Meceri, Michael Mecseri, Denice Ellis and Rick Parham, took the 14-day review period to review the rezoning proposal against the required factors outlined by the City of Manhattan.

“Considering the first criteria point of ‘The existing use of the property, its physical and environmental characteristics, its zoning history, and its suitability for the currently allowed uses,’ both parcels contain historic residential homes actively serving affordable housing needs, which the Housing Market Analysis says should be preserved,” the team wrote in a presentation to the City Commission. “Furthermore, the neighborhood has a stable, long-term residential zoning pattern consistent with the Comprehensive Plan’s ‘stabilize’ designation and was down-zoned in 2015 to enhance stabilization.”

According to the second review factor, “Consistency with the Comprehensive Plan,” the proposal to rezone the two properties would contradict the community decision to down-zone the neighborhoods east of City Park and the goals of the Comprehensive Plan adopted in 2015.
“It did catch us off guard how directly they were contradicting all the plans that are out and available to everyone,” Borst said.

The third review point, “Adequacy of services and infrastructure for permitted uses in the proposed district,” is not met, as the current power grid may not be sufficiently enhanced to meet the requirements of the new condos. 

“There is potential risk of transformer overload, increased residential demand could reduce reliability or require rolling upgrades without load balancing or new feeder lines, and new feeder lines would not likely be underground and would add to the unsightliness of overhead lines,” the coalition wrote. 

Considering review factors four and five, described as “the character of the neighborhood, including the zoning and uses of nearby property” and “compatibility of the proposed zoning district with nearby property,” the original proposal contains yet another direct contradiction with the Comprehensive Plan.

“The Comprehensive Plan encourages stabilization of established neighborhoods in and around the core area by supporting the retention of existing housing stock, which the East Park Neighborhood already is as it stands,” the coalition wrote.  

The sixth review factor, “the proposed change addresses a community need identified in an adopted plan,” is also not satisfied in the current proposal. According to the Housing Market Analysis, “The existing housing stock is a critical asset to providing moderately-priced homes to the market, and it is generally more efficient to do so than build new.”

“From a unit delivery standpoint, the renovation of existing single-family homes will deliver more workforce-attainable units to the market than new construction. Rezoning will create more issues by potentially removing affordable housing from the inventory and negatively impact this affordable neighborhood by creating instability that discourages buyers from investing in the area,” the coalition wrote in reference to the Housing Market Analysis.

Borst said while researching to prepare for their protest, he found that other cities were incredibly cooperative with their communities when it came to rezoning spaces. 

“I found that Derby, Kansas, went through something similar recently, and they were fully transparent. All of their information is free and available online for anyone to find, even myself, who is not a Derby resident. Manhattan is not being that way, though I wish they were.”

“This all seems to be a groupthink situation,” Borst said. “If we are going to be group thinkers, I wish we could at least all get thinking in the same direction about these things.

The Collegian made multiple attempts to talk to the City of Manhattan Commission, but they could not be reached for comment.