MILES SCHNAER, owner of the Crown Chevrolet Toyota Scion dealership, has acquired the former Payless Cashways Building Materials building to expand his operations. He has high hopes for the development in south Lawrence. See related story on 1E.
Miles Schnaer is spending at least $3.8 million today to ensure that his automotive dealerships are ready for the Lawrence of tomorrow.
And while it means moving fast to make a June 20 deadline to vacate some of his existing property - his Toyota dealership's home will be used to accommodate plans for a Wal-Mart expansion - Schnaer doesn't mind enduring a little inconvenience now to chart a course for a brighter future.
He sees it as part of keeping Lawrence moving in the right direction.
"What a tremendous opportunity," said Schnaer, who acquired the former Payless Cashways Building Materials building near 34th and Iowa streets from Wal-Mart and is converting the building into a new home for his Toyota and used-car dealerships. "I just could not pass it up :
"Once the South Lawrence Trafficway opens up, there will be a lot of traffic coming from the west and coming from the east that doesn't have a clue what's going on at the south side of Lawrence. And I think everything that's growing out here is growing with the right kind of growth pattern involved."
Such optimism is a driving force for many leaders in the Lawrence economy these days, as emerging challenges test their resolve but ultimately push them into coping, regrouping and - if all goes according to plan - thriving in the months and years ahead.
"We have to deal with these as opportunities, go from that perspective," said Lavern Squier, president of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, the city's largest business organization.
The challenges range from rising residential prices to sluggish commercial construction to up-and-down employment levels.
SIXTH STREET BETWEEN Folks Road and the South Lawrence Trafficway is being widened to four lanes. The photo above is looking east on Sixth Street toward Lawrence. See related story, page 10A.
'Things are happening'
Rod Anderson, owner of the Kansas City, Mo.-based Anderson Restaurant Group that owns Hereford House in Lawrence, has watched his business cool in Lawrence in the wake of several factors: increased competition, a city-imposed smoking ban, a lack of construction of a new shopping center across the street and months of inconvenience driven by the reconstruction of Sixth Street, from Folks Road to the South Lawrence Trafficway.
But after having indicated last year that he might have to close the restaurant at Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive, Anderson recently implemented changes to show he's committed to keeping the city's largest restaurant in business - by adjusting suppliers, reducing employment, changing schedules, offering specials and opening up an outdoor patio.
The mounting challenges forced him and his employees "to become better business people," Anderson said, but he wouldn't stick with it if he didn't think Lawrence was on the way up.
"Things are happening," he said, noting that offices were filling up along Wakarusa Drive. "We want to be in a position to grab hold of that growth when it does happen, but run a profitable business in the meantime."
Much of the growth is coming courtesy of Kansas University, which has landed multimillion-dollar research grants that generate new jobs and investment.
ROSEMARY O'MALLEY, an eighth-grader at Central Junior High School, shops at Arizona Trading Co. The consignment store opened in 1991. Since then, more buy, sell and trade stores have surfaced in Lawrence. See related story, page 6C.
Checking out KU
Gale Lantis, a co-owner of Mar Lan Construction LLC, said he had turned to other communities for commercial work, as Lawrence's business-construction activity had slowed in recent months.
"There hasn't been a lot of interest here, in either the commercial and industrial field, for building new projects or adding on so far this year," he said.
But he hasn't given up. The Lawrence school district recently received voter approval for $54.1 million in school improvements, and Mar Lan already has landed a project at KU: a new library annex on West Campus.
The library job starts soon and looks to be worth about $4 million to the Lawrence-based construction firm.
"It's a little slow right now, but general consensus is there will be quite a bit of work at KU in the next few years," Lantis said.
Even a sluggish economy and layoffs at some major employers haven't been able to get business leaders down.
At Serologicals Corp.'s new $28 million manufacturing plant in the East Hills Business Park, the company laid off 20 employees March 14. The move came before the plant could ramp up to full production of Ex-Cyte, a liquid to promote cell growth.
FROM LEFT, 1-year-old charlotte toumi, Melinda Bretthauer and Jaered Long swing together in Watson Park.
Serologicals said customers needed more time to validate the plant's operations, which already had cleared the company's own tests.
Bud Ingalls, chief financial officer for the Atlanta-based enterprise, said employees were given severance packages and offered other incentives to return to the company once the plant was cleared to hit full production, hopefully by year's end.
"We're going to need the same people we have today and more," Ingalls said at the time.
Dealer 'pretty positive'
Another business at East Hills, Sauer-Danfoss Co., apparently already has made the turnaround. The maker of hydraulic power systems for off-road equipment now has about 210 employees, after new production lines were added earlier this year; the plant had ended 2004 with 185 employees, after adding 40 workers during the year. A year earlier, the plant had added 45 workers.
Previously, the plant's peak employment had been 122 jobs at the end of 2001, just as the effects of the 9-11 terror attacks were hobbling the U.S. economy.
Keith Folkmann, who has led the company's Lawrence operations since the plant opened in January 1999, said he was pleased the plant's employment was on the upswing.
"We're very happy to have reached this point in our growth," Folkmann said earlier this year. "We recognize that through the recession, we weren't meeting our original projections, but we are at the point of being delighted that we can share with the community that we have not only reached our projections, but exceeded them.
"Hopefully that will continue."
Schnaer, whose Lawrence dealerships also sell Chevrolet and Scion vehicles, is looking forward to hearing more good news in the months ahead. He's confident that the long-stalled trafficway project will be completed, that plans for a new U.S. Highway 59 freeway to ease travel between Lawrence and Ottawa will remain on track, and that Lawrence will follow through with plans for a new sewage-treatment plant along the Wakarusa River by 2011.
Add it all up, he said, and Lawrence should continue moving forward.
"I'm not prognosticating, by any stretch," he said. "There is going to be growth here. I'm pretty positive about it, and I think the other car dealers are positive about it and, obviously, there are businesses coming into town more and more and developers coming into town, and they're pretty excited about it.
"There are banks on every corner, so they've got to fill them. And by putting money in these banks, that means somebody's got to be making money."
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