Sandbar Subs, 745 New Hampshire St.

There soon will be one less convenience in downtown Lawrence. No, you can still get a cup of coffee every 12 feet, and if you like a beverage that is colder with more suds, that’s available about every six feet. But if you are just looking for a bag of chips or a pack of gum, the idea of a downtown convenience store has taken a hit.

The Sandbar sub shop and convenience store is closing its location at Eighth and New Hampshire streets perhaps as early as next week, owner and operator Peach Madl said. Sandbar recently became the food vendor for several facilities of the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department, including the sports pavilion at Rock Chalk Park and the indoor aquatic center. Madl said that contract is keeping her crew plenty busy, and she’s decided to close the downtown store.

The decision means one less sandwich shop in downtown, but more significantly it marks the end of an interesting experiment in downtown. The business was meant to serve as a downtown convenience store where you could pick up items like candy, corn nuts, aspirin, corn nuts, chips, bottles of pop, corn nuts, beef jerky and, of course, corn nuts.

“The convenience store concept has not been a strong point of the business,” Madl said.

Sandbar Subs, 745 New Hampshire St.

The idea had some fanfare when it opened. A convenience store was touted as the type of business that would be useful in an area that is trying to add more living units. But, for whatever reason, the idea did not take off with residents and others. Madl speculated that the business may have come just a bit too early in the development of downtown as a living area. Or, it may be that the concept wasn’t quite right, she said.

“Downtown might be a little more upscale than we are,” Madl said.

Sandbar shares space with the downtown location of Peoples Bank. The bank will remain in the building, Madl said. Sandbar actually has the lease for the entire building, and Madl said a search for a tenant to fill the Sandbar portion of the building has begun.

It also is worth noting that the idea of corn nuts at 10 a.m. is not entirely dead in downtown. Just a couple of doors down from Sandbar’s location at Eighth and New Hampshire is Tobacco Bazaar, 14 E. Eighth Street. It primarily is a tobacco shop, but it also is marketing itself as a small convenience store. It has chips, drinks, frozen sandwiches, some basic medicines and even some dairy products. Owner Raju Ahmed said the majority of his business still comes from the tobacco side of the business, but said he still is optimistic about the convenience store concept.

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• I don’t know if corn nut availability has anything to do with it, but Kansas isn’t doing a very good job of keeping or attracting young college graduates. At least that was the upshot of a recent article in The New York Times. You can read the full article, but the most interesting part was the map that is below.

It shows from 2000 to 2015 which states have seen a net increase in college graduates under the age of 40 and which states have seen a decline. Kansas is in the category that has declined, which fits with what we have generally been hearing about the “brain drain” over the years.

But I thought I would pass along this graphic because it is interesting to see how we stack up with others. We are performing better than places like the Dakotas and Iowa. We are performing worse than almost any state along a coast. But what is surprising is that we are performing worse than state’s like Oklahoma, Arkansas and Wyoming.

What does Oklahoma have that we don’t?

Source: The New York Times