A majority of Lawrence city commissioners opposed a proposal by a Baltimore, Md., firm to rezone land in southwest Lawrence allowing development of a 450,000-square-foot regional shopping mall. An attorney for the firm said he hoped commissioners would review the request carefully from “a standpoint that times have changed and that development of a downtown mall might not be possible. Lawrence leaders had long been working on downtown redevelopment and were not inclined to go with the concept of a “cornfield mall.” Earlier efforts in that direction had been derailed.

Kansas University administrators said the KU Asbestos Center would begin serving the public by early 1985 from a Kansas City office and that this could result in better conditions at a number of local sites.

The building that had housed the old Stokely-Van Camp food processing plant was being considered by Jim Schwartzburg, president of Packer Plastics, as a location form some Packer operations. The site at 10th and Delaware offered 140,000 square feet for such development. Packer currently leased another site for its warehouse spacing and was looking for more room.