Kansas developer lost $1.4 million in dirt to a seven-year statutory clock
Kansas developer lost $1.4 million in dirt to a seven-year statutory clock
2026-09-10 · Kansas · Courts
A Johnson County developer promised a two-mile private driving track, sold garage condominiums from $120,000, then stopped building. Seven years later the undeveloped ground belongs to the unit owners. The Kansas Court of Appeals said so in a published opinion filed June 18, 2026 in Stonegate Motorplaza Condominium Association, Inc. v. HP Motorplaza, LLC, No. 128,469.1
It is the only Kansas appellate decision on community association law in the past two years, and it turns on a deadline most declarations never mention.
The facts
The developer recorded a Declaration of Garage Condominium on July 17, 2015 with the Johnson County Register of Deeds, submitting the property to the Kansas Apartment Ownership Act. The plat recorded with it showed Lots 1, 2, 4 and 5 labelled “Convertible Land,” Tract A labelled “Common Area,” and a building containing twelve units.
In December 2015 the developer replatted Lot 2, built a second building, amended the declaration to add units 201 through 212, and removed Lot 2 from the convertible land description. A final replat of eight units followed in January 2022, with no change to the convertible land. Then nothing. In September 2023 — as the court put it, “seven years and nine months since the last designation of convertible land” — the association sued for a declaration that the development rights had lapsed.
Why the clock exists
The opinion sets out the reasoning at length, and that part matters most to boards. “Convertible land” is defined at K.S.A. 58-3102(h) as the “building site for one or more proposed additional condominium units within the submitted land.” K.S.A. 58-3115a provides that “all convertible lands shall be deemed a part of the common area and facilities until converted.”2
The court explained what that trade is for. Early buyers “have a right to rely on the declaration filed by the developer. They buy this real property with an expectation that a certain number of units and amenities will be developed. They make a significant investment, and they need to rely on written commitments made by the developer to ensure that their investment will not be compromised. Acts like the Condo Act are adopted to protect those interests.”
In exchange, convertible land “can be reallocated and altered without their consent as new units are built.” The seven-year limit is what bounds that power. Conversion “must be converted within seven years from the recording of the declaration, unless a shorter time is set out in the declaration.”
The holding, and the sentence that will be quoted
The district court granted summary judgment for the association, and on the convertible land the Court of Appeals affirmed: the developer “has failed to develop convertible land within seven years and therefore that land is now wholly owned by the unit owners as common land and is no longer held in fee simple by Developer.”
The syllabus point that will carry furthest is broader than the facts: “A developer cannot create a partial condominium or an almost condominium. The filing of the declaration establishes the ownership rights of the condominium owners, current and future, subject also to provisions of the Apartment Ownership Act.”
No transfer, deed or court order is needed. Conversion is deemed to occur when the developer records the amendment together with the floor plans and plat; if that never happens within the window, the land simply stays what K.S.A. 58-3115a already deemed it to be.
What a Kansas condominium board can do with this
Find the recording date of your declaration and count. This is a calendar exercise, and it is the single most valuable thing a board can take from the case. Pull the declaration from the register of deeds, note the recording date, and check whether the declaration itself shortens the seven-year period — the statute expressly permits a shorter term.
Identify what the plat labels. The opinion turns on labels recorded at the outset: convertible land, common area, expandable land. A board that has never looked at the recorded condominium plat may not know which category the vacant ground in the community falls into, and the answer determines everything.
Note that partial conversion resets nothing. The developer here converted Lot 2 in 2015 and amended the description. That did not extend the clock for Lots 1, 4 and 5. The window runs from recording the declaration, not from the last activity.
Understand what the association actually gains. Common area owned by the unit owners as tenants in common is not free money. K.S.A. 58-3119 makes the association responsible for managing and maintaining the common elements and collecting assessments to pay for them. Land that arrives this way arrives with mowing, drainage, liability and property tax attached, and those reach the budget in the year the land does.
The wider Kansas point
The Apartment Ownership Act is opt-in. It governs a Kansas project only where someone recorded a declaration submitting the property to it. Communities organized under the Townhouse Ownership Act, or as covenanted subdivisions with no submission at all, have no equivalent seven-year mechanism — there is no statutory clock running against a stalled developer in an ordinary Kansas planned community.
That is worth knowing before a board in a non-condominium community reads this case and assumes the same remedy is available. It is not.
What to watch next
Watch for a petition for review at the Kansas Supreme Court. We found no record of one as of September 10, 2026, roughly three months after filing, but we also could not confirm that none was filed.
And watch for the opinion's P.3d citation to be assigned. Until then it should be cited by docket number as a published Court of Appeals decision.
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