Maybe some of you remember the days of Shorty’s Cafe in downtown Lawrence, and still have the cholesterol readings to prove it. Well, a new East Lawrence diner has a connection to that downtown restaurant that existed decades ago.

The Haskell Avenue Cafe opened earlier this month in the shopping center at 19th and Haskell. Area businessman Chad Wilson is the owner of the new establishment. But his mother, Lynda Wilson, is helping with the management and cooking at the restaurant. She is a veteran in the Lawrence food industry, having worked at a lot of down-home cooking restaurants such as Shorty’s, Village Inn, Country Kitchen and other locations around the area. (I’m only going off what several readers have told me about Shorty’s. It was already gone when I got here 23 years ago, which I believe has reduced my life insurance premium by a couple bucks a month.)

“That’s what this place is about — down-home cooking,” Lynda said. “We don’t do any cooking from a can, and our meat is never frozen. We buy our meat fresh and bread it here.”

Anytime you are talking about breading meat, that is a positive sign, and indeed chicken fried steak, fried chicken and several other such dishes are regular items on the menu. The restaurant also regularly serves hot roast beef and hot turkey plates. Meatloaf is a standard item on the menu, as well as hamburger steak, ham dinners and an assortment of sandwiches.

The restaurant is open from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m., so breakfast is a big part of the business. That menu has all the regulars, including biscuits and gravy, French toast, eggs any way and a host of breakfast meats. There’s even something called a hashbrown omelet, which is an omelet that uses hashbrowns instead of eggs. Sounds great. A side order of eggs would make it perfect.

The restaurant also bakes an assortment of cinnamon rolls, turnovers, muffins, pies and other pastries.

Lynda said the restaurant is opening at 5 a.m., in part, because the 19th and Haskell shopping center is a bus stop for the popular Johnson County transit route that runs between Lawrence and Johnson County Community College. Commuters start getting on the bus early, and she hopes they’ll stop by for a pastry and a cup of coffee. The restaurant also is trying to get the lunch crowd that is in a hurry by offering a daily special that can be served up hot and quick for people who have only a 30-minute lunch break.

The restaurant was in the spot that for a short time housed the Bum Steer BBQ restaurant. That establishment has closed, although I understand that Bum Steer is still in the catering business. For a short time — and I mean just a couple of weeks — another restaurant operator had opened up a diner in the spot called Genia Lyns Cafe. But I guess that wasn’t meant to be, and the Wilsons stepped in after that establishment quickly closed.

The 19th and Haskell site has had a lot of turnover through the years, but Lynda said she believe the diner concept eventually will take hold with the East Lawrence neighborhood.

“We know it will take a little bit for something like this to catch on,” Lynda said. “People get used to the fast food and the drive-thrus, but we think people still want food like this.”

In other news and notes from around town:

• The future of the shopping center at 19th and Haskell comes up from time to time as the property has gone quite awhile without a major renovation. The owner of the center wants folks to know that the topic is on his mind as well.

Ajay Suvarna leads the company that owns the center, and he told me he is now actively looking to redevelop the property.

“I want to downsize the amount of retail there and convert some of it into affordable housing,” said Suvarna. “I think that could be supported economically.”

The idea has come up before. Back in 2007, the city hired a team of planning consultants, called PlaceMakers, to come up with concepts for how the city could include more mixed-use developments. The consultants highlighted several sites ripe for redevelopment, and 19th and Haskell was one of them. The group created a concept that included 30 to 40 residential lots, a convenience store and about 20,000 square feet of retail that would be contained in a development that looked a lot like a downtown block.

Suvarna said that concept may be too dense in his opinion, but he likes the idea of trying to use the property to house more affordable housing units, since Haskell Avenue already is home to several Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority properties. On the retail side, he said there is a demand for some neighborhood services in East Lawrence. The 19th and Haskell center stays about 80 percent leased, he said, but thus far it hasn’t been successful enough to fund a major renovation of the space.

Suvarna said the redevelopment of the former Farmland Industries property into a new business park also will likely increase the viability of the 19th and Haskell Center. No plans have been filed yet, but Suvarna does have a name for the project: MIller’s Corner, a reference to the historic Robert H. Miller home just east of the commercial development.

Suvarna — an Overland Park resident who bought the property about 10 years ago as an investment — said he’s in the process of lining up partners for a potential redevelopment, or may place the property on the market to gauge whether there is an independent group that wants to take on the project. The plans could change if he finds a major tenant for the existing development. So, all in all, it looks like it is an intersection to keep an eye on.