Bob Schumm started his restaurant business on the steps of Lawrence fraternity and sorority houses. Deanell Tacha had a legal career that took her one step away from a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Mike McGrew has sold thousands of front steps and every other part of Lawrence and Douglas County homes. But Peggy Johnson might lay claim to the sweetest career step. Her doughnuts and coffee at Jennings ...
When it comes to a possible expansion of the county’s Judicial and Law Enforcement Center in downtown Lawrence, 70s are wild. First, the estimated project cost for the renovation and expansion of the building near the county courthouse at 11th and Massachusetts is $70 million Second, the amount of new space that would be added to the building is 70,000 square feet. Third, the project, when completed, ...
If you are one of those people who nearly cracked over the rising price of eggs the last couple of years, you may want to get out your bubble-wrap suit. Douglas County commissioners — and by extension county taxpayers — may soon find out there is an even more painful form of inflation. Building-construction inflation adds up in a hurry, and Douglas County leaders may experience $50 million to $60 million ...
Electric rates are going up next month in Lawrence, after state regulators and Evergy reached a deal on Tuesday. That’s fitting because 2023 has been a year that knows how to push through a price increase. (The best way to save money at a grocery store in 2023 was to use the express lane. It gave the store less time to raise its prices.) But maybe the year is getting more mellow as it winds down. Evergy’s ...
There was a time not long ago that Jay Kalbas, Kansas’ new state geologist, had about 30 billion reasons to be excited about his job. As a master of the subsurface, Kalbas was leading teams of geologists and scientists who were helping to find game-changing amounts of oil beneath the ocean floor. He was doing it for ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the world. It was being done in a place that ...
Forget the saying “a tough nut to crack.” Evidently, the real problem with nuts is what to do with all the darn shells once you have cracked them. Indeed, there was a California company that had 25 acres of pistachio shells and no good idea of what to do with them. Pistachio shells don’t biodegrade very well, and it didn’t seem like it would be environmentally responsible to just dump them in a ...