West Lawrence lands corporate headquarters for financial services firm; Lawrence, other Kansas cities mediocre in new economic ranking

A financial services firm with offices in Johnson County and Topeka is moving its corporate headquarters to Lawrence, and will be bringing about 20 jobs in the process.

DM Bruce Associates has completed a deal to buy a west Lawrence office building at 4911 Legends Drive to house its financial advisers, planners and administrative staff who provide financial planning services for families and small businesses across the country. The company plans to have 18 jobs in Lawrence when it opens later this year.

“Running two locations was quite the operation for us,” said Zach Stover, vice president of operations for the company. “There are a lot of things we feel like we can be more efficient at by consolidating. Lawrence is the halfway point, and it just made a lot of sense for us to make the move.”

The company is locating in the building that formerly was occupied by Harris Computer Systems. Stover said the approximately 6,500 square foot building was purchased with longterm plans in mind.

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“I still feel like we have a lot of potential to grow,” Stover said. “We take on and launch new financial advisers when we see the opportunity. It is a nice piece of land, and we could build additional space if we need to down the line.”

Marilyn Bittenbender of Lawrence’s Colliers International brokered the sale of the building.

Stover said he hopes the company will be operating in the Lawrence office by December. The company plans to keep satellite offices open in Topeka and Overland Park.

The company has been in operation in one form or another since 1974, Stover said. The company provides services in investment management, insurance consulting, financial planning, and also has a company that provides consulting services to other, independent financial advisers, according to the company’s website.


In other news and notes from around town:

• I have more news from our friends at WalletHub, the financial website that as we reported yesterday ranked Kansas as the 9th best state in the country for teachers. This time, the company is ranking cities with the fastest growing economies. Despite all our teachers rolling in the dough, Lawrence didn’t fare that well. (Teachers, I jest. I would have thought six years of high school would have taught me that my humor is often lost on the education profession.)

Lawrence’s economy ranked No. 317 out of 515 communities that were studied.

The study looked at factors such as population growth, growth of working-age population, poverty rates, median household income growth rates; unemployment rates, job growth, the ratio of full-time to part-time jobs, growth in the number of business establishments, and median home prices. The report used data from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Unfortunately, the report didn’t provide all the underlying statistics for each community, so I can’t tell you how Lawrence fared in each category.

But I can tell you how Lawrence did in comparison to other communities that we often track. Lawrence finished No. 118 out of the 211 small cities with populations of less than 100,000 people. Here is a look at how some regional cities did in the overall list of 515 cities:

• Columbia, Mo.: No. 32

• Lubbock, Texas: No 65

• Oklahoma City: No. 93

• Norman, Okla.: No. 103

• Boulder, Colo.: No. 123

• Iowa City: No. 165

• Lincoln, Neb.: No. 194

• Springfield Mo. : No. 238

• St. Joseph, Mo.: No. 243

• Olathe: No. 250

• Kansas City, Mo.: No. 255

• Wichita: No. 268

• Lawrence: No. 317

• Independence, Mo.: No. 321

• Des Moines, Iowa: No. 324

• Kansas City, Kan. : No. 342

• Overland Park: No. 363

• Topeka, No. 392

• St. Louis: No. 490

So, Lawrence wasn’t alone among Kansas cities that didn’t fare great in the rankings. Only one Kansas community — Olathe — finished in the top half of the rankings, and that wasn’t by much. One thing we have going against us, it appears, is we didn’t strike a lot of oil. Texas communities, which were booming as a result of a strong oil and gas economy, took nine of the top 10 spots. If the rankings were done on the current conditions, it likely would look much different as the oil industry is much weaker today.

I’ll throw in this reminder, as I often do with WalletHub studies: You have to figure out what you want to make of these. The ranking process is clearly subjective. The rankings are determined by how much weight you want to give any one statistic, and which statistics you want to look at to begin with. But I like passing along reports like this one because they are based on valid government statistics that are worth paying attention to.

Now, are the rankings a matter of debate? They appear to be, given some of the feedback I’ve gotten from teachers today who are not sure Kansas is the ninth best state in the U.S. for teachers. I had one invite me to a school lunch today to see firsthand how good teachers have it. I told her I may indeed come. Caviar and prime rib sounds good today.

All these years later, and they still don’t find me funny.