The idea of a food find in 2020 was a bit unusual. There were some days early in the pandemic that you were happy to find a crate of ramen and a bottle of ketchup on the grocery shelves. (With candlelight and a mask placed over your eyes, you would swear you were at the finest Italian ...
The only reason I ever considered taking geometry at KU was to better understand pizza strategy. (I learned when I’m really hungry, I have my pizza pie cut into 16 pieces instead of 12.) In other words, pizza is a big deal in Lawrence, which makes it hard to believe that the third-largest ...
The home improvement game is competitive locally. And I’m not just talking about when my neighbor added a Jacuzzi and I added a swimming pool with a 747 engine to outdo him. No, I’m talking about the competition between home improvement retailers. Now there are signs that one of those ...
Properties, of course, can’t catch COVID, but one prominent piece of vacant ground along Sixth Street got sick from the pandemic nonetheless. I’m talking about the vacant commercial lot at the northwest corner of Sixth Street and Folks Road. As other pieces of property in growing ...
We all got new hobbies in 2020, and for many it was pushing the “Buy Now” button on the computer screen. 2021’s hobby may be finding a place to store it all. (As I’ve already explained, I didn’t think the Jumbotron would be that jumbo.) Regardless, area residents soon might have a new ...
Let’s end the year by emptying the notebook of some news and notes from around town: — I would have thought the most popular improvement project at a grocery store in 2020 was adding a security booth in the toilet paper aisle. But actually, there were quite a few major upgrades to ...
The idea of a large apartment complex on vacant property just southwest of Clinton Parkway and Iowa Street won’t go away. Neither will the day care center that sits near the middle of that vacant property. Plans once again have been filed for a more than 300-bedroom apartment complex to be ...
Two types of people seem to exist at the end of the holiday season — one full of joy and bounce as they sprint to the year-end finish line, and another wondering whether anyone would find them if they took a nap under the Christmas tree. Lawrence seems to be finishing the year much like the ...
My college apartment complex was more likely to have a phone booth than a podcasting booth. In other words, podcasting wasn’t a thing, but now it is becoming the type of amenity that’s showing up in new upscale student apartment complexes in Lawrence. “People are finding it really ...
Good news on the unemployment front isn’t in store for this holiday season. You’ve probably seen the national news of an uptick in joblessness recently, after a turnaround appeared to be in process. Now, we have state and Lawrence numbers that show the same is happening here. The ...
It would be inaccurate to say there is not a dime’s worth of difference between living in Lawrence and Joplin, Mo. One is home to a major university and in a growing corridor just minutes away from somewhat cosmopolitan Kansas City. The other is in an isolated area of southwest Missouri and ...
As leaders at LMH Health look ahead to 2021, they expect the pandemic to have eased greatly by the second half of the year and for finances at the not-for-profit hospital to be on an upswing. But they aren’t expecting it to be a year without threats. LMH will be on the lookout for ...
Certain parts of Lawrence love a good Thomas Fritzel question. My phone started ringing after The Kansas City Star earlier this month published an article raising questions about the propriety of a $9 million federally backed, pandemic-related loan that was given to a little-known company tied ...
It is easy to predict that the economic tally for Lawrence in 2020 won’t be pretty. It also is a good bet that the final analysis will show the 2020 downturn was fueled, in part, by tough times in the city’s rental market, as the pandemic caused hundreds — if not thousands — of students ...
Lawrence’s oldest Italian restaurant is set to close by the end of the year — with no plans to reopen elsewhere — as a new convenience store development is set to take its place. Paisano’s Ristorante permanently will close no later than Dec. 31, owner and operator Steve Butland told ...
Hector Juarez grew up in the border town of El Paso, Texas, so he knows something about both Tex and Mex. For one, he knows that particular style of Americanized Mexican food isn’t always what people are looking for. Or, at least, he thinks that is the case. A new Mexican restaurant in ...
Years ago, tourism leaders used to call every weekend that featured a home KU football game a million-dollar weekend. I don’t know what impact price inflation and fan deflation have had on that figure, but the point is still the same: The local economy gets a big-dollar boost by spending from ...
If this Saturday you see a Wells Fargo stagecoach driving down Massachusetts Street, you really won’t need to start wondering what was in that eggnog you just drank. Your eyes won’t be playing tricks on you. It will just be a small bit of Christmas cheer on a day that usually has a huge ...
If Clark Griswold from the the classic comedy “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” wrote a business plan, surely it would look something like this: More than a mile’s worth of Christmas lights strung through a couple of downtown Lawrence buildings, and an old camper parked out front ...
There certainly have been times I’ve entered a bank branch worried that my account will be empty. Now, it appears there are times I may enter a bank branch to find the actual branch empty — as in no employees. Indeed, Bank of America is opening a new type of branch in Lawrence. The ...