News and notes from the Lawrence real estate scene: ¢ A national chain is entering the fitness and health club market in Lawrence. Anytime Fitness plans to open its first Lawrence location next week. The club is under construction in the shopping center next to the Hy-Vee Food and Drug Store on Clinton Parkway. The club’s big selling point is that it is open 24/7, and if you join the Lawrence club you have free access to all Anytime Fitness clubs across the country. The company’s Web site says it has about 700 clubs nationwide. The Lawrence operation is owned by Doug Carstens and Jason Kapke. Carstens owns an Anytime Fitness franchise in Gardner, and Kapke owns one in Columbus, Neb. Carstens said Lawrence’s high number of young professionals got the pair interested in opening a Lawrence location. ¢ Motorists on the southern portion of Haskell Avenue should be noticing a change to the skyline.Construction work is entering the final phases of a new 56,000 square feet building that will house Westar Energy’s Operations Center. The building is about a block west of the 27th and Haskell intersection. The center will be home to Westar’s maintenance crews that respond to power outages and other issues dealing with the area’s electrical system. The company has had its operations center at the site for several years, but the new building will nearly triple the size of the facility, said Westar architect Pat Tryon.Tryon said the company is building the facility to handle the maintenance needs of the area for the next 10 to 15 years. Currently, about 40 employees work out of the building, he said. Crews with Lawrence-based B.A. Green Construction plan to complete the work on the building by the end of the year. ¢ The cluster of shops in the parking lot area of Home Depot and Best Buy at 31st and Iowa, will soon have a new tenant. Construction work is underway on Your Style, a new hair care business._If you know of a new business that is opening up, or want to give us the heads up about a real estate deal that you think is newsworthy, drop me a line at the link below._