Amid continuing financial losses, leaders of LMH Health are now combating — and denying — rumors that the nonprofit hospital will turn to large-scale layoffs to improve the business’s bottom line. At a Wednesday evening meeting of the hospital’s board of trustees, board member Bob ...
This seems backwards to me, but August was both the time for back to school and back to looking for a new house. That’s odd because I’ve found that when my kids go back to school, my current house becomes much more livable. Regardless, Lawrence home sales soared in August. Home sales ...
A few news and notes from around town: • I don’t know if you ever wonder what causes a Kansas City company to decide to expand into Lawrence, but I do occasionally. Most of the time, the answer is college kids. But every once in awhile, it is Goldilocks. At least that is what I’ve found ...
An auto repair shop in an arts district makes a lot of sense. Anytime I’ve created art, critics have said they would love to drive a truck through it. A longtime Lawrence auto shop indeed has made a move off of 23rd Street and now finds itself down the street from art and other such culture. ...
The walls at the old Ernst & Son Hardware store in downtown Lawrence were a lot like the Loch Ness monster: rumored to exist but rarely seen. Past customers of the mom-and-pop hardware store know what I mean. The old store was so packed with nuts, bolts, tools, wagon wheel parts — really, ...
Big swings just aren’t for the playground anymore in Lawrence. You’ll also find them as you drive around town looking for the best gasoline prices. After years of gasoline prices being pretty much the same no matter where you drove in Lawrence, there are now noticeable differences around ...
A new custom-made pizza kitchen, and perhaps a hibachi grill, are coming to Lawrence’s Hy-Vee grocery store on Clinton Parkway. The west Lawrence store is part of a group of Kansas City-area stores that will receive about $90 million worth of renovations in total. The big change for the ...
Uber may come in handy today when you don’t want to carry a pocket of quarters and mess with parking meters in downtown. But years ago, an Ober’s was the handiest of places, especially if you had a fancy turkey pull on your calendar. Before you think I’ve had one too many pulls of ...
Comebacks really are possible, which is why I refuse to throw away three-quarters of the clothes in my closet. First, the KU football team pulls off one on Saturday, and now it looks like local businesses are experiencing a bit of a bounce back too. After being down for much of 2019, local ...
We are becoming a world of scans. We scan everything from our shopper cards to get a discount to our fingerprints to get into our smartphones. But lots of people are betting that the real scanning revolution will be in health care. Think of the day when we scan our whole body to get advanced ...
There are times I’ve had a meal where a chiropractic adjustment would be welcome afterward. (An all-you-can-eat buffet plate can get pretty heavy.) I don’t think that is the intention behind a new Lawrence food truck business, but, nonetheless, plans call for it to set up permanent shop in ...
The idea of a big shopping center at the Iowa Street and South Lawrence Trafficway interchange isn’t dead after all. If you remember, we reported last month that there was speculation the out-of-state development group that has proposed the shopping center at the southeast corner of the ...
We should all have Kansas City envy. The state has released its annual report on wages across Kansas, and the numbers are a good reminder that pretty much all of us make less than what we would if were working in the much larger Kansas City economy. But some of us should be more green with ...
I’ve been told it is a faux pas to have a power tool inside a retail establishment. (Evidently it is “coercion” to ask for a half-off deal while holding a running chainsaw, lawyer-types say.) Regardless, a soon-to-open west Lawrence craft store will be putting power tools in the hands of ...
I am a ball of sunshine every morning, but I know of people who speak only in the language best described as daybreak grunt. It can create quite an ordeal at the McDonald’s counter if the poor soul taking the order doesn’t know that mggmffn, MGGMFFN! means my beloved would like a McMuffin, ...
In my personal life, I spend a lot of time doing cost analysis. For the record, I have found a double cheeseburger always pays for itself. (It is double the meat and cheese, people.) But local governments currently are dealing with an even meatier question: Does growth pay for itself? No, it ...
It is time to keep our ears open for a new downtown grocery store rumor. This one doesn’t focus on the former Borders bookstore location at Seventh and New Hampshire streets, but rather is a block away at the old Journal-World printing plant. Dan Simons, a member of the family who owns the ...
I know I certainly could use a million-dollar smile — heck even a $25 one — to help pay for some of the bills that I compile at south Iowa Street retailers. Maybe we all will be in luck. A second major dental franchise has filed plans to locate on the south Iowa corridor. Plans have been ...
Let’s do an update on some 23rd Street projects. “Soon” is the key word on that street, just as it is the key word I keep repeating to my kids who have taken on that late-summer feral look. Soon school will start, and soon a couple of new businesses will open on 23rd Street. The ...
My dreams of being a farmer continue to get squashed. First, I planted actual squash in my garden when I thought I was planting cucumbers. (True story, and yes the pickles really are terrible.) And now, I get the latest data on how much farmland costs in Douglas County these days. The ...