WRITER: Chad Lawhorn

A downtown boutique is about to get four times larger, while pushing back against online shopping

The downtown Lawrence boutique Striped Cow is getting much bigger. (Join the club. As the saying goes these days, I’ve social distanced from everything but the refrigerator door.) But owner David Jess is betting this is an expansion to get excited about, hopefully even showing how brick-and-mortar retail can compete with online retailers. As we reported in September, Jess struck a deal to buy the former ...

Douglas County unemployment projected to be nearly 15%; self-employed still waiting for answers on benefits

Story updated 5:50 p.m. Thursday Douglas County’s estimated unemployment rate is now up to 14.8%, but the number of county residents making new unemployment filings has hit its lowest level since mid-March, when the pandemic began shuttering businesses across the state. The estimated unemployment rate for the county is up 1.2 percentage points from a 13.6% rate last week, as estimated by the University of ...

Lawrence firm giving away 500 face shields and seeking to prove you can still find PPE, if you know where to look

The items that Barb Gruber sells through her Lawrence-based promotional products business — key chains, T-shirts and other company giveaways — ordinarily won’t do much to improve a person’s health. But as Gruber and quite a few other people have noticed, these aren’t ordinary times. Instead, in these strange times, an industry primarily known for providing businesses with trinkets emblazoned with ...

New numbers show who is dying of COVID-19 in Kansas; elderly are most likely to die, but middle-aged most likely to contract disease

We now have more detailed data on who is dying from COVID-19 in Kansas. As many suspected, the elderly are suffering the highest number of deaths, but that doesn’t mean you have to be old to get the virus. People between the ages of 35 and 44 have been the most likely to get the disease. As we reported last week, Kansas Department of Health and Environment officials hadn’t been reporting on the age of ...

Sales tax numbers don't yet show the big drop to come; Kansans saw their earnings rise in 2019, but at below-average rate

We kind of are in a Road Runner cartoon moment. It is that point of the episode where Wile E. Coyote is running toward the cliff. We all know he is going to drop off the cliff, and, surely after all these episodes, he does, too. That’s where Lawrence and the state are when it comes to sales tax collections. The cliff is getting very near. The Kansas Department of Revenue released its latest sales tax numbers ...

Local unemployment now near 14%, but another COVID chart is encouraging for Douglas County

News and notes from around town, with a heavy dose of COVID-19 numbers, and information on a furlough policy that has some Hallmark employees upset. — The unemployment numbers are still grim for Douglas County, but now we have more company. The latest estimate compiled by researchers at the University of Kansas pegs unemployment in Douglas County at 13.6%. That’s up from 11.3% a week ago, according to ...