This article was originally published prior to June 2, 2013. Due to a change in the content management systems, the initial publication date in not available. 

On the trip to Lawrence, future Baker students may be seeing more than an old gas station.

Recently, the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission passed a preliminary plan for an 18-acre subdivision that would house up to four businesses at the intersections of U.S. 59 and U.S. 56 at Baldwin Junction. Joseph Daniels Jr., Tonganoxie, placed the request but said he has no specific businesses in mind right now.

“I think it will probably be a business area and whatever the area will support, we hope it will get,” Daniels said. “There’s a financial institution out there and usually one will complement another.”

Daniels said the project is on an indefinite timeline because the lots facing U.S. 59 cannot be developed until the project to make a four-lane freeway between Ottawa and Lawrence is completed. The Kansas Department of Transportation projections state completion will be late 2011.

“Obviously it’s going to take some time,” Daniels said.

One lot does face north onto U.S. 56, and Daniels said work can begin on that one sooner than the others.

While Baker students may see Baldwin Junction as a stop sign on the way to Lawrence, Daniels said it has a history and a sense of community that makes it a good business location that should not be overlooked. He said in the past a baseball team even called Baldwin Junction home.

“They term it a business node in the county,” he said. “It’s been there for years and years and years. It’d give that area a sense of community.”

Baldwin City Administrator Jeff Dingman said the biggest impact construction at Baldwin Junction will have on Baldwin City comes from the additional tax revenue for the school district

“From the city’s perspective, we prefer to have any sort of business development within the city,” Dingman said. “I think the location makes sense for some reasons, to serve a rural base.”

Senior Erin Blackburn doesn’t think the idea of a retail area at Baldwin Junction makes sense.

“It’s off by itself,” she said. “If you were in a big city it’d be nothing. I think they would’ve had better luck keeping it as a gas station, especially since (Zarco) is gone.”