With flames shooting out of its sides, it didn’t take Bruce Barlow long to surmise his longtime BKB Leather repair shop was going to be a complete loss. It took him only a few seconds longer to determine that he was going to rebuild the nearly 40-year-old business that has gained a following for everything from shoe repair to leather upholstery. After all, he knew he had the right resumé for the job. ...
Ever since Panasonic announced it was building a $4 billion, 4,000-job battery plant in nearby De Soto, people have been questioning who will fill all those jobs. Now, maybe there is another question to ask about those jobs: Do they come with a battery charger? It appears many of the jobs on the factory floor of the plant will work 12-hour shifts, usually with two days on and then two or three days off, ...
The top executive with the Kansas Board of Regents has a word he uses to describe the college-going rate in the state: Free-falling The number of Kansas high school seniors who graduated and attended a public university in the state in 2011 was 54%. In 2021, the most recent year data is available, it had fallen to 43%. So, the word “free-falling” does describe the problem. Half of the word may also ...
The Big 12 Conference is interested in adding “at least” one more member and will “keep communications open” with Pac-12 or other schools, KU Chancellor Douglas Girod said Wednesday. Girod, in a brief interview with the Journal-World, did not mention any schools that the conference is targeting, and he said the conference does not feel like it needs to meet any particular timeline for expansion. Girod ...
With half the year now in the books, Lawrence’s housing market is a bit like the stubborn bathroom scale. You eat less, you exercise more, you no longer start the day with Fruit Loops (even though I thought my doctor loved all types of fruit.) Yet, the scale won’t budge downward. So it is with the Lawrence housing market, which sure looks like it has been on a diet for the first six months of 2023. The ...
A slim majority of Lawrence city commissioners are willing to give financial incentives to a project that aims to convert a long-vacant downtown building into a new corporate headquarters for a local firm. City commissioners on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a property tax rebate request to renovate the former Borders bookstore building at Seventh and New Hampshire streets into a corporate headquarters ...