photo by: Shutterstock

Plans are underway for a Braum’s restaurant to locate in Lawrence.

There’s an old saying about all of us screaming for ice cream. Now, I’m wondering whether some of us will cry about it too, given the latest news from the ice cream and fast food chain Braum’s.

As we reported all the way back in May 2023, the Oklahoma-based chain bought property in northwest Lawrence and filed plans to locate one of its hamburger and ice cream shops in Lawrence. The development, though, has never come, but Braum’s has been keeping me updated about its plans.

The latest update: The company doesn’t have a Lawrence store on either its 2025 or 2026 development plans.

“We still have plans to develop there, but we don’t have a timeline yet,” Amanda Beuchaw, a spokeswoman for Braum’s corporate operation, said via email.

Indeed, Douglas County land records continue to show that an entity affiliated with the Braum’s corporation owns the lot at the northeast corner of Sixth Street and Entrada Drive. If you are having a hard time picturing the location, Entrada Drive is a short street that is a few hundred feet west of Sixth Street and George Williams Way.

If you have forgotten, George Williams Way is the street that most people use to get to the Rock Chalk Park sports complex. That’s one reason that this proposed Braum’s restaurant is important beyond the ice cream. (To be clear, the ice cream is pretty important to some of us.) Braum’s would be the first retail/restaurant type of use in the development next to Rock Chalk Park.

Rock Chalk Park — which includes the city’s multi-gym Sports Pavilion recreation center, plus KU’s track and field, softball, soccer and tennis facilities — turned 10 years old earlier this year. It was a big public-private partnership between the city, KU, KU Endowment and a private development group led by the Fritzel family of Lawrence. For its part, the city invested about $25 million of taxpayer funds into the project.

The sports facilities have been up and operating and attracting users for a decade. The Sports Pavilion hosts a number of youth basketball and volleyball tournaments that attract teams from the Kansas City and Topeka region on a regular basis. The KU facilities host KU events, and occasionally draw some national or regional contests, including the U.S. Junior Olympics track and field championships, the Big 12 track and field championships, and a semifinal championship track and field meet for the NCAA.

But the retail development that was expected to locate next to the sports facility simply hasn’t materialized. One hotel has located in the retail/commercially-zoned district that is immediately south of the complex. LMH Health also has located its LMH West complex — full of doctors offices and outpatient facilities — at the site. But the site has about 10 other lots that are zoned for commercial or retail uses that remain empty.

When Braum’s filed plans in 2023, that created a new round of excitement for the commercial development. There’s a belief that once a traditional retailer or restaurant locates at the site and has success that others will follow. That indeed is a common scenario in retail developments — the going can be slow until the first success story.

One other company also has bought land out there, and now may beat Braum’s to the site — although it would have a lot less ice cream. Truity Federal Credit Union owns a vacant parcel a few hundred feet north of the Sixth Street and George Williams Way intersection. Presumably that location will become the home of a new credit union and financial center for the company in the future. The map below shows the overall commercial development, with the blue star marking the location that Braum’s owns and the red star marking the spot that Truity owns.

photo by: Douglas County GIS/LJWorld

The blue star shows the proposed site for Braum’s restaurant, while the red star shows land owned by Truity Federal Credit Union in northwest Lawrence.

The commercial development is significant in Lawrence because it is probably the site that most easily could accommodate a new big box store in town. It already has the zoning in place for a big box store, which is not an easy task to acquire in Lawrence. As you can see, the developers have left a large lot in the center of the property to provide room for such stores.

If you have ever heard the rumor that Costco is coming to town, that big lot in the center is the location most often pointed to. However, the rumor literally has been off-and-on for a decade, and what I can tell you is that Costco has never filed a plan to locate in Lawrence, and it does not own that site. A partnership between the Schwada and Fritzel families of Lawrence own all the vacant sites within the commercial development, according to land records.

A Costco and a Braum’s almost next door to each other would almost certainly lead to another hotel being built in the development, because I know several people who would insist on never being more than 1,000 feet away from the site.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on the Costco, but the Braum’s spokeswoman did make a point to say that the company still likes the Lawrence market. The move to Lawrence, though, would be a big one for the company from a geographic standpoint.

The Oklahoma City-based chain has long publicized that it will not locate one of its restaurants more than 300 miles away from its dairy and ice cream plant in Tuttle, Oklahoma, in order to keep its dairy products extremely fresh. Lawrence is 344 miles away from Tuttle, and it appears this location would be the farthest north the company has ventured.

Lawrence, though, would make some sense to be the exception to the rule. The founder of Braum’s, Bill Braum, graduated from the University of Kansas in the 1940s. Bill’s father, at that time already, was a large dairy farmer and was processing butter and ice cream in the family’s hometown of Emporia.

The family went on to have a popular Kansas chain of ice cream stores called Peter Pan Ice Cream. It eventually was sold, and as part of that deal the Braum family couldn’t sell ice cream in Kansas for a decade.

The story goes that the family moved its 900 dairy cows to Oklahoma, opened a shop called Braum’s there, and then grew to more than 300 locations in Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas and, after the contract prohibitions expired, in Kansas. But only parts of Kansas. With the 300-mile radius rule in effect, the farthest north the store came was its old hometown of Emporia.

It appears for the next couple of years, that will still be a prime reason to make a visit to Emporia.