One cigar shop closes, while another plans to open premium lounge downtown; art event set to close portion of Mass. Street

photo by: John Young

Sara Ziegler, of St. Louis, Mo., helps her nephew, two-year-old Elliot Polson, of Lawrence, make his own art in the park during the 53rd annual Art in the Park event, held Sunday, May 4, 2014, at South Park in downtown Lawrence.

I don’t have to remind fellow KU fans that we won’t be needing a celebratory cigar for this weekend’s Final Four — unless we want to stick it up the nose of a Sooner fan. (My apologies, as you may have sensed, I haven’t quite figured out whether to root for our fellow Big 12 member.) Regardless, west Lawrence’s upscale cigar shop and lounge has closed, but there is word of a new one heading to downtown.

Centro Cigars at 4811 Bob Billings Parkway has closed. I went to the location, and it was locked up, and a fellow at an adjacent business also confirmed the closing, although he said he’d been informed people were looking at the location with some hope of reopening the cigar shop and lounge in future months.

More certain is that plans are underway to open Issachar Cigar Shop at 726 Massachusetts St. Owner Michael McNellis, a Johnson County private equity firm manager, said the business will be a “premier cigar lounge.”

“Unfortunately, we are nowhere near opening,” McNellis said. “I wish we were.”

If you are confused about where the business is locating, it is going into the space that formerly housed Creation Station. (That still may leave some of you confused, as eliminating confusion wasn’t exactly the eclectic Creation Station’s calling card.)

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The new business venture allows McNellis to combine a couple of things he really enjoys: cigars and downtown Lawrence.

“This is a flat-out homer call for me,” said McNellis, who grew up in Lawrence. “I’m a fan and love the downtown, and I just want to be part of that culture.”

McNellis said he plans on hiring several cigar experts to staff the business. Plans call for people to be able to purchase cigars there and also to be able to smoke them on the premises with other aficionados.

You may be confused again, since Lawrence does have an indoor smoking ban. But the ban does allow for smoking to take place at businesses that are designated as tobacco shops. Tobacco shops, though, have to meet some pretty strict definitions and have limitations on what they can sell. For example, the cigar lounge won’t be able to sell you a nice glass of wine or bourbon to go along with that cigar.

McNellis said patrons also won’t be able to bring their own bottle of wine or alcoholic beverage to consume on-site. He said the site will offer coffee and soft drinks, comfortable furniture and other amenities for cigar fans.

“It will be a very nice environment to enjoy a cigar,” McNellis said. “Unfortunately, it is still several months away.”

McNellis said he hopes construction work to remodel the building begins in earnest in April. Among the changes planned for the building is a new patio area on the back side of the building.

In other news and notes from around town:

• As I told you a couple of weeks ago, we are entering the season when street parties and road-closed signs will start popping up in downtown like dandelions in a Lawhorn lawn. The latest event to receive City Hall approval is a longtime Lawrence tradition. Art in the Park has received a permit to hold its annual event on May 1.

Plans call for the portion of Massachusetts Street that runs through South Park to be closed to traffic from 6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on May 1. The event will include vendors on the street, but also spread out through South Park.

The event is hosted by the Lawrence Art Guild, and as we have reported, that nonprofit has had some organizational troubles. But this permit seems to be a good sign that those troubles will not derail the popular Art in the Park event.

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