No, Hallmark Cards isn’t expanding. The nearby armory isn’t advancing across the street. The Lawrence school district isn’t building a new junior high across from its headquarters.

Instead, the owners of an empty lot near the Kansas Turnpike simply are adding and moving some dirt around with an eye toward the future.

The undeveloped lot – covering about five acres along the north side of Princeton Boulevard, between North Iowa Street and McDonald Drive – is getting an infusion of shale being hauled in from another major construction site in town: Oread Inn.

The hotel project includes a new underground parking structure north of 12th Street and Oread Avenue, just north of Kansas University’s main campus. And the hotel’s development group, which includes Thomas Fritzel, needs a place to put some of the shale being excavated.

Enter the lot – also owned by a group that includes Fritzel – that is south of Hallmark Cards’ Lawrence production center, 101 McDonald Drive. Crews from King’s Construction Co. Inc., of Oskaloosa, ended last week by scraping off the layer of topsoil and setting it aside to make way for the soon-to-be-relocated shale.

The additional shale will allow the lot’s surface to be brought up to street level, said Paul Werner, a Lawrence architect working on site plans for the sites’ property owners.

There are no immediate plans for development, he said. While an earlier attempt to secure rezoning for the property to allow commercial uses – such a convenience store – failed to gain approval, the lot simply is being prepared for something new, down the proverbial road.

“We’ll eventually be site planning something there,” Werner said, noting that the site is zoned for industrial uses. “Someday.”