News and notes from around town:

• Fans of the downtown restaurant Jefferson’s should mark their calendars for the first week of May. New owner Brandon Graham said he’s hoping to get the sports bar and grill open by May 5.

Graham also said that the restaurant will have the same menu and atmosphere — complete with the dollar bills on the wall — that existed before the restaurant was shut down by state revenue officials for back taxes.

Graham wasn’t connected with the previous management of the restaurant at all, and he said those issues with the state were taken care of before he became involved.

“We saw an opportunity to take advantage of an existing Lawrence fixture and get it back to where it used to be,” Graham said.

Graham has installed all new equipment in the restaurant, remodeled the bathrooms and just given the place a top to bottom cleaning. He comes into the venture with restaurant experience. He owns four Mr. Goodcents locations in Topeka and one in Bonner Springs.

“We’re really excited about being part of Lawrence again,” said Graham, who grew up in Lawrence and attended KU.

• In the category of slightly old data but the newest we have, the federal government has released a report on how much money we make. The Bureau of Economic Analysis on Wednesday released a report on the per capita income for every county in the country as of 2009. It wasn’t exactly a great read for Douglas County. As has long been the case, Douglas County’s per capita income is quite a bit less than the statewide average. But to make matters worse, over the last five years, we’ve lost ground in that category. In other words, the per capita income for Douglas County has grown at a slower rate than the per capita income for the state as a whole. One piece of good news is that in 2009 — when the economy, one hopes, was at its worst — Douglas County residents saw their incomes decline at a slower rate than the state as a whole or many other counties. Here’s a more detailed look at the numbers:

1. Douglas County’s per capita income for 2009 was $32,070, down 0.2 percent from 2008. Statewide, per capita income in 2009 was $39,173. It was down 2.1 percent from 2008 levels.
2. From 2004 to 2009, Douglas County’s per capita income has grown 18.5 percent. During the same time period, per capita income statewide has grown 22.7 percent.
3. Douglas County has fared better than Johnson County both in the last year and during the last five years. Well, at least by percentages. Johnson County’s per capita income in 2009 fell by 4.7 percent. From 2004 to 2009, per capita income grew by 13.8 percent in Johnson County — or about 5 percent less than Douglas County. I don’t think, however, many Johnson County residents will offer to trade paychecks. Johnson County continues to be the only urban county in the state with per capita income greater than $50,000. Even with the downturn, per capita incomes in Johnson County checked in at $53,353.
4. Thankfully this isn’t anything important like basketball because Riley County and the Kansas State Wildcats have just dominated us for the last half decade. In 2004, Douglas and Riley counties both had per capita incomes of just more than $27,000 per year. By 2009, Douglas County’s had grown to $32,070. Riley County’s had grown to $40,358. That’s a growth rate of 49.3 percent, which I would guess, would make it one of the higher ranking counties in the nation when it comes to income growth. As several Lawrence residents who don’t like this comparison will point out, Riley County isn’t just a university community. It also is has a major military base next door, which has seen its troop numbers grow. That’s true, and certainly has been a factor. Geary County, where Fort Riley is located, has seen its per capita income increase from $29,540 in 2004 to $41,444 in 2009.
5. I quickly looked at the data for three other university communities — Ames, Iowa, Columbia, Mo., and, yes, Boulder, Colo. — to see how Lawrence compared. Lawrence had the lowest per capita income of the group, but did have better growth rates than some. Columbia has a per capita income of $36,649 — about $4,000 higher than Lawrence’s — but its five year growth rate of 15.4 percent was less than Lawrence’s. Ames was much the same. Its per capita income of $35,616 is about $3,000 more than Lawrence’s, but its five-year growth rate of 17.9 percent was slightly less than ours. Boulder, per usual, is different. Its per capita income was $48,056, putting it at a different level than Lawrence’s. But its five-year growth rate was 11.7 percent, well below ours. Clearly, Boulder’s tech-economy has become much more cyclical than our university economy. Boulder’s per capita income fell 5.2 percent in 2009 alone. I’ll look at some other university communities later in the day and report back.

• Economic development leaders have said one of the keys to improving Lawrence’s income is to move our economy beyond being dominated by the university. One measure of that is commercial and industrial businesses becoming a larger part of our tax base. New numbers show that has been tough going the last couple of years. Recently released numbers from the Douglas County Appraiser’s office show that the total value of commercial and industrial property in Douglas County in 2011 is less than it was in 2009. The total assessed value (in other words taxable value, not appraised value) of commercial and industrial property was $259.3 million at the beginning of 2011. At the beginning of 2009 it was $259.9 million. The good news is that the numbers have rebounded a little bit. In 2010, they had fallen to $258.8 million. Of course, the downturn in the real estate market is behind the decline, but it is interesting to note that the downturn hasn’t impacted residential values as much. In 2009, residential real estate had an assessed value of $689.4 million. By 2011 it had grown to $703.1 million.

• All right, I hear you. Enough with the numbers. And how about something a little more cheery? There certainly have been a lot of economic development efforts in Lawrence: the new bioscience incubator, efforts to convert Farmland into a business park, and several others we have reported on. But if you want to get a snapshot of what has happened on that front and others, the city has recently released its annual report. It is not a big number, financial type of document. It is more about how the city is working to meet the goals created by the City Commission, and it is cheerier than what I have given you today. You can access the report here.