January sure seems like it didn’t get the memo that 2021 was supposed to be a bounce-back year. Lawrence City Hall got its first sales tax check of the new year, and the best you can say about it is at least it didn’t bounce. It wasn’t that bad, but it also wasn’t anything to brag about. Lawrence posted a 9.1% drop in sales tax collections for the month, compared to the same period a year ago. That is ...
There’s a joke circulating among Lawrence real estate agents these days: Tom Brady has been in more Super Bowls than Lawrence has houses for sale. “It is not quite that bad yet, but it is close,” said John Huntington Jr., president of the Lawrence Board of Realtors. Hopefully the next punchline isn’t that you need Brady’s wallet to buy a house in Lawrence. Lawrence’s real estate market finished ...
About one out of every 10 jobs in Lawrence and Douglas County disappeared in 2020, according to the latest report from the Kansas Department of Labor. That’s already a pretty striking statistic on our pandemic times, but there’s an even more startling one if you dig deeper into the numbers: Douglas County has seen 22 years worth of job gains evaporate in a single year. When the state recently released ...
Finally, I have found a piano I’m qualified to play. Its keys are frozen and its upper cabinet has been converted into a wine rack. It is one of the items in North Lawrence’s new secondhand shop, Reclaimed by Michele. Owner Michele Johnson says the shop at 628 N. Second St. will be a place to find slightly funky items that have been reclaimed in new ways. The piano is an example of that. But Johnson said ...
I know one sure-fire way to grow the revenues of a glass company is to pay for my green fees, buy me a beverage and point me toward the fairway with the most homes. Evidently there are other ways too, as an East Lawrence glass company is undertaking a major expansion. I’ve also got updates on several other East Lawrence development projects, but let’s start with glass. Kennedy Glass has undertaken an ...
New efforts to fight COVID-19 appear likely to add more manufacturing jobs at a Lawrence-based plant. A local economic development official confirmed Tuesday that Plastikon Industries has won a key job that is expected to produce 50 new positions at its high-tech plant in the East Hills Business Park. The plant produces medical vials, and now it is adding a new production line that will fill and cap some ...