Downtown Lawrence grocery store in the works for 11th and Massachusetts

The owners of Lawrence’s Checkers grocery store are working to finalize a deal to build a new downtown grocery store at 11th and Massachusetts streets.

Jim Lewis, an owner of the Checkers store at 23rd and Louisiana, confirmed he’s working with Lawrence businessmen Doug Compton, Rand Allen and Treanor Architects to redevelop the former Allen Press property at the northeast corner of 11th and Massachusetts streets. The grocery store would be on the ground floor of a seven-story building that also would include office and apartment uses. The building would be adjacent to a parking garage proposed to be built just east of the alley that runs between Massachusetts and New Hampshire streets.

“We’ll shrink the store down from what we have at Checkers, but it will still be a price-oriented grocery store,” Lewis said. “That is our game.”

Lewis had been pursuing a deal to locate a grocery store in the former Borders Bookstore building at Seventh and New Hampshire streets. But as the Journal-World previously reported, negotiations with the out-of-town owner of the building stalled.

The Compton/Allen group had previously proposed a seven-story building for the site — which is right across from the Douglas County Courthouse and Watkins Community Museum — that would have included a drug store on the ground floor. But as the Journal-World previously reported, negotiations with the national drug store chain also stalled.

“The development group reached out to us and said they would love to have us involved in their project,” Lewis said. “From our perspective, dealing with local people is really refreshing. They understand what we want, and we understand what they want.”

A deal for the project, however, is not yet done. Parking issues will be paramount to the project, Lewis said. Lawrence city commissioners will be asked to consider one major parking issue at their Tuesday evening meeting. The grocery store is seeking exclusive, non-metered use of 18 parking spaces along the east side of Massachusetts Street. The grocery store also is seeking exclusive, non-metered use of 16 new angled parking spaces that would be built along 11th Street.

“If we don’t have enough parking, you can’t have enough business, and then it fails,” Lewis said.

Lewis said the project also likely would involve some other incentive requests from the city. He said a tax increment financing district, which would allow some of the taxes generated by the project to be used to pay for parking and infrastructure, was a possibility.

As for the store itself, preliminary plans call for it to be about 22,000 square feet and offer a full line of groceries and produce. Lewis said his son J.R. Lewis is leading the design and has plans to create a store that really highlights its independent ownership.

“He wants to take it back to more of the way it was in the ’50 and ’60s,” Lewis said. “It would be a real hometown grocery store.”

Lewis said the development plans to ask the city to allow the building to have design features along its Massachusetts Street facade that would allow for an open air-market type of feel during certain times of the year.

Lewis said the idea of a downtown grocery store has been popular with lots of customers who come to the flagship Checkers store, 2300 Louisiana St., which would remain in business with the new project.

“I have people asking me everyday in the store whether we’re going to get something done downtown,” Lewis said. “I tell them I’m working on it, and I really do think we’re going to get it done.”