photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The former Borders bookstore building at Seventh and New Hampshire streets in downtown Lawrence is pictured on June 23, 2026.

Everybody, it seems, has an idea for the former, and now long-vacant, Borders bookstore building at Seventh and New Hampshire streets in downtown Lawrence.

For years, it was considered the key to bringing a grocery store to downtown Lawrence. It wasn’t, and it didn’t.

Another time, it was going to be a great location for Lawrence’s next large scale corporate office user that wanted to be in the heart of downtown. Despite there being some activity on that front — think of CEK’s new downtown Lawrence location or Alarm.com’s pending move to Vermont Street — the old Borders building hasn’t ever been the chosen location.

Once, the building actually was proposed to be the foundation of something much more substantial. A multi-story apartment building would be built atop the structure, and the corner would become home to a multi-use building, much like several other corners on New Hampshire have become. Lawrence’s skyline tells you that project didn’t happen either.

Now, there is talk of making the site home to a use not often contemplated in downtown — self storage units.

The building’s owner, Lawrence businessman Adam Williams, is testing the waters on the idea by asking the city to approve a text amendment that would make self-storage units an allowed use in downtown’s commercial zoning district. Currently, the code doesn’t provide a path for self storage units in the downtown district.

Williams told me he hasn’t decided whether he actually would try to convert the building to self storage units, but he would like to know whether it is an option he can consider. There’s one big reason he would like to know.

The building has been vacant for 15 years.

Borders closed the bookstore in April 2011 as part of the national retailer’s bankruptcy proceedings. A couple of years later it served as a temporary home for the Lawrence Public Library while its main facility was being renovated. The building has hosted a couple of other temporary businesses, like a pop-up Halloween shop, but it main activity for the last 15 years has been to be a major contributor to downtown’s vacancy rate.

Williams said the idea of using the building as a storage facility goes back to when he owned a self-storage business near 23rd and Harper in eastern Lawrence. He had numerous downtown business owners who rented space from him because their storefronts didn’t have enough storage to meet all their needs. The eastern Lawrence location was one of the closer facilities to downtown, but wasn’t exactly convenient.

Plus, Williams said, the building would convert pretty easily to self storage. The building’s ceilings are tall enough that a second level could be added to the building without requiring major modifications to the exterior of the building.

“We would just brighten it up and make it look a little newer,” Williams said of changes to the exterior of the building, which already has a loading dock area from when it was housing books.

Williams, mind you, would be happy to go another direction with the building. He’s marketing the building to more traditional commercial users, and would be ready to consider a number of proposals.

“But if office space or retail doesn’t pan out, we have to have something there,” Williams said.

The project has been difficult to find another user for because it was basically custom built to be a bookstore. Finding another one of those that needs nearly 20,000 square feet is a difficult task. The configuration of the building also makes it very difficult to “chop up” into apartments or condominiums. An office user could be a possibility, but it would likely need to be a large one, which doesn’t come along everyday.

“Finding an 18,000-square-foot office user is not an easy task,” Williams said.

If the American economy worked on the idea of populism rather than capitalism, the site would be a grocery store. There was long an active group of residents who actively worked to attract a grocery store tenant to the site. That hasn’t been a point of focus since Williams bought the property from Lawrence businessman Doug Compton a few years ago.

“While people love the idea of a grocery store, the site is just not big enough,” Williams said. “You would have to find some parking for it.”

The property does have a larger than normal parking lot for a downtown Lawrence property — which is to say it has a parking lot, which is not the norm in the district — but Williams decided a portion of that parking lot could be put to a better use.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Row houses that are under construction at the corner of Seventh and Rhode Island streets in downtown Lawrence are pictured on June 23, 2026.

As we have reported several times, Williams is the developer behind the project to build 15 row houses on the eastern edge of what was the Borders parking lot. The row houses face east, and are directly along Rhode Island Street. Construction is about to wrap up on the approximately 1,800-square-feet, upper-end housing units, which have been on the market for around $600,000. Williams said construction is expected to be completed in August.

While that project has allowed Williams to take some time to figure out what the future should be for the Borders building, he said ultimately a solution for the building has to be found.

“The other alternative is to tear it down,” Williams said. “That is our least favorite option, but it is an option.”

The feasibility of storage units in the space should gain some clarity soon. The Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission will consider the text amendment idea at its Wednesday meeting. However, even if planning commissioners are amenable to the idea, there would still be several more approvals needed before any project could move forward. A text amendment would need approval from the City Commission, in addition to the Planning Commission. Then, Williams, if he decided to move forward, would need to propose a specific project for the building.

Planning Commission approval of the first step is not assured on Wednesday. The city’s planning staff stopped short of recommending that storage businesses be allowed in downtown, but did say the increasing number of residential units in downtown — which often don’t have a lot of storage — made the idea worthy of consideration.