Starving Artists Moving, Lawrence, is operating under new ownership.

Tom Van Holt recently sold the business to three professionals he’d had on the payroll at one time or another: Craig and Valerie Foos and Brian Cloyd.

The deal allows Van Holt to travel, and the three new owners to move ahead with three trucks, up to eight movers and a drive to keep things going through a downturn in the residential housing market.

“We have always wanted to buy this,” said Valerie Foos, who served as Van Holt’s first office manager before moving on to work at Park 25 Apartments for the past 12 years. “We think we can do enough business, locally, until the economy becomes afloat. That will keep us on a steady course until things bounce back.”

Starving Artists, which stages its trucks from the parking lot of the former Farmland Industries fertilizer plant, handles moves in northeastern Kansas and as far west as Manhattan.