It won’t be long before it is time to fire up the grill, double up on the cholesterol medicine and stock up on the meat. Well, plans are in the works for a new Lawrence business that can help with the meat part, especially if you are a fan of homemade sausages and frankfurters.

Lee Meisel, the butcher for the popular downtown restaurant 715, has filed plans to open Leeway Franks in the shopping center at Ninth and Iowa streets. The shop is going into the building at 935 Iowa that is just east of the bowling alley. The space formerly housed Daylight Donuts, which appears to have left the Lawrence market. (Yes, I feel like I should deliver a soliloquy on how we must take the bitter with the sweet in this life. But I’m too busy drawing on eyebrows after this year’s pre-season experiments with lighter fluid.)

Leeway Franks will produce a variety of sausages, including an all-beef frankfurter, classic bratwursts, Polish sausage, and several daily specials that could include some items made from bison or game meats. The shop will sell its creations out of a butcher case for people to take home to prepare themselves.

“We think we’ll get a lot of business on game days from tailgaters,” Meisel said.

But the business also will have a kitchen and a small dining area for about 20 people.

“The food is going to be really casual and approachable for everyone,” Meisel said. “The whole idea is to have a place where you can get a really good hot dog and a cold beer.”

Meisel said he also plans to offer a few side items that he became accustomed to while growing up in North Dakota: french fries with brown gravy, and Tater Tots with cheese sauce. (I thought he said this place was going to be casual. I think that was two thirds of the normal menu for a Bill Clinton state dinner.)

The frankfurters, though, are expected to be the speciality at Leeway Franks. Meisel said they’ll be an all-natural product, made with area beef and won’t include fillers. They’ll also feature a natural casing that provides a certain crispness when you bite into it. And Meisel said they’ll have a blend of spices that goes beyond just the large amount of salt you get with the 99 cent packages of hot dogs.

“Unless you grew up in a place like Wisconsin or Chicago where they do a lot of traditional frankfurters, I don’t think a lot of people have had them quite like this,” Meisel said.

Meisel hopes to have the restaurant up and running by late spring or sometime this summer.

In other news and notes from around town:

• Get ready for the second annual Kansas Food Truck Festival, which will be hosted again in East Lawrence. (How awesome would it be if one of the trucks was a tanker truck filled with brown gravy for all the french fries?) Organizers have announced that the food truck festival is set for May 2 in the warehouse arts district in East Lawrence. Tickets for the event go on sale today.

As was the case last year, proceeds from the event will benefit Just Food, the nonprofit food bank that serves Douglas County.

Organizers expect about 20 food trucks from across the state to set up shop in the 800 block of Pennsylvania Street from 5-10 p.m. May 2. The event also is expected to feature live music, art and activities for the kids.

For more information about the festival, go to the event’s website at ksfoodtruckfest.com

• It looks like the days of building contractors really sharpening their pencils to win bids for city construction projects may be coming to an end. At their meeting on Tuesday, city commissioners are poised to reject bids for two major projects because they came in significantly over the cost estimates of engineers.

I previously alerted you to the fact that bids for the city’s sewer plant project south of the Wakarusa River came in at about $50 million instead of the estimated $46 million. Well, commissioners at their weekly meeting will be asked to reject those bids, and direct engineers to come up with some ways to reduce the scope of the project slightly to save some money. But city officials warn that even then the project may come in above the previously estimated $45.9 million engineer’s estimate. The city-hired engineering firm said there appears to be a fairly simple reason for the higher-than-expected costs.

“It appears that higher bid costs can be attributed in part to a strong construction market and a general trend upwards in construction costs,” John Keller, a project manager for Black & Veatch, said in a letter to city officials.

Further evidence of that trend can be found in North Lawrence. City officials in late February received bids for the Maple Street Pump Station, which is designed to reduce storm water flooding in North Lawrence.

The low bid came in at $5.9 million compared to an engineer’s estimate of $4.1 million. Engineers are recommending that the bids be rejected, and that the scope of the project be reviewed. Engineers don’t yet have a date in mind for when the project could be re-bid.

As for the sewer plant project, engineers expect to open new bids on that project in early April.