BUSINESS
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD LJWorld.com/local Monday, January 6, 2014 5A
New breakfast choice on the horizon Editor’s Note: These are excerpts from Chad Lawhorn’s Town Talk column, which appears each weekday at LJWorld.com. To subscribe to the e-mail edition of Town Talk, go to: ljworld.com/towntalk/ signup/ We’re just a few days into 2014, and already this new year is conspiring against my utter devotion to high fashion. Signs have emerged that the popular breakfast eatery The Big Biscuit will be opening a restaurant near Sixth and Wakarusa streets. That’s of course a major fashion story in my household because biscuits and gravy are the ultimate Thai food. Check that. I mean Tie food, as in if there is a bowl of sausage gravy anywhere within a mile of me, my necktie will find its way into it. The Big Biscuit will be opening in the Westgate shopping center, which is the center that has Marisco’s, Glory Days Pizza and several other longtime businesses. The restaurant will be taking the large, center anchor position of the shopping center. It will be the restaurant’s sixth location. The other five are in the Kansas City metro area, with the closest one in Shawnee. Chad Offerdahl, an owner of the restaurant group, said he expects the Lawrence location to open in mid-to-late February. He thinks the busi-
Town Talk
Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
ness will fill a niche as well. “We’re feel-good food,” Offerdahl said. “You come here to get the kind of food your mom made when you were growing up.” As its name suggests, the restaurant specializes in breakfast fare. According to its website, the restaurant has nearly 60 breakfast dishes on its menu. I’m talking about 11 omelets, ranging from your traditional Western omelet to one called a Ranchero that actually has grilled steak, jalapeno peppers and other ingredients. There are also nearly 10 kinds of pancakes, including a cinnamon roll version, blueberry, strawberry and banana pecan. The restaurant also is open for lunch with a menu that includes a variety of burgers, sandwiches, chicken dishes and wraps. Of course, breakfast is also served during the lunch hour as well.
If your New Year’s resolution involved dressing
up like Elvis and having a Turkey Turkey on Pita, it appears you now have one less option in Lawrence. The Spangles near Sixth and Kasold streets has gone out of business. (What? You don’t dress like Elvis when you go to a 1950s-style diner?) The restaurant, 3420 W. Sixth Street, made a big splash when it entered the Lawrence market. About 250 people camped outside the doors — I’m talking about in actual tents in the parking lot — when the restaurant opened in April 2006. Campers, who stayed through a thunderstorm, were hoping to win a contest where the first 100 people at the restaurant would win certificates for a year’s worth of free meals. I chatted with Dale Steven, one of the owners of the Spangles chain this afternoon, and he confirmed the restaurant has no plans to reopen in another location in Lawrence. “We’re very disappointed, but we would sure like to come back,” Steven said. “We would like to look at other locations in town.” Steven said the company — which operates 28 restaurants across the state — decided that the location near Sixth and Kasold streets simply wasn’t producing the sales the business expected. Steven said he thinks a location closer to Kan-
sas University would be a better fit for the business. Steven said Spangles leases the location at 3420 W. Sixth Street, which used to house a Runza restaurant. He said Spangles is trying to sub-lease the space to another tenant.
Get your hiking boots laced up and start hoping for warmer weather — or heavier long johns. Either way, it really is looking like Lawrence is going to have a new nature park and hiking trail. Officials with the Lawrence nonprofit group Outside for a Better Inside have announced they’ve successfully raised $55,000 in private funds to match a $55,000 grant that will be used to fund a central Lawrence trail project. As we’ve previously reported, the Sunflower Foundation has agreed to provide grant money for a project to build a nature park and trail on about eight acres of the former Veterans of Foreign Wars post in the Pinckney neighborhood. The Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center is donating the property to the city, and Outside for a Better Inside has committed to find the grant money and the private money to build the trail through the property, which has an old pond and a good amount of hardwood forest.
States confirm water pollution from drilling By Kevin Begos Associated Press
PITTSBURGH — In at least four states that have nurtured the nation’s energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen. The Associated Press requested data on drilling-related complaints in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas and found major differences in how the states report such problems. Texas provided the most detail, while the other states provided only general outlines. And while the confirmed problems represent only a tiny portion of the thousands of oil and gas wells drilled each year in the U.S., the lack of detail in some state reports could help fuel public confusion and mistrust. The AP found that Pennsylvania received 398 complaints in 2013 alleging that oil or natural gas drilling polluted or otherwise affected private water wells, compared with 499 in 2012. The Pennsylvania complaints can include allegations of short-term diminished water flow,
The Sunflower grant, however, was contingent upon local leaders matching the grant money with private funds. Longtime Lawrence real estate executive John McGrew leads the Outside for a Better Inside group, and he predicted it wouldn’t take long to come up with the necessary $55,000 in matching funds. And it didn’t. It was only announced in mid-December that the group had been chosen for the grant. The group now hopes to raise another $20,000 to make other improvements to the trail project. I haven’t heard anything definitive from city officials yet, but Outside for a Better Inside now believes that work could begin on constructing the trail this spring. Previously city officials have said they believe this new city park, which will be named in honor of the late Bert Nash leader Sandra Shaw, could be open to the public by the fall. The idea for trails in the area may not be done yet. The property, which is at about Second and Alabama streets, is adjacent to Burcham Park. There’s been talk of extending a trail from Burcham to Constant Park, which is the piece of greenspace along the Kansas River at Sixth and Kentucky streets. Marilyn Hull — a staff member with
the Douglas County Community Foundation, which administers a fund for Outside for a Better Inside — said private fundraising is being contemplated for that project. I haven’t heard an estimate yet of how much money needs to be raised. If successful, the project would create a river-walk area that would be just a block or two away from Massachusetts Street. As we previously have reported, there also have been discussions at City Hall about creating a new East Lawrence trail that would connect the Burroughs Creek Trail near 11th and Haskell streets with the Constant Park area near Sixth and Kentucky streets. Hull said those discussions also are continuing. The idea of a robust trail system throughout the community has supporters on the Lawrence City Commission. And given that more than $50,000 in private money was raised in less than half a month, it sure appears there’s support in the private sector as well. It looks like an issue to keep an eye on. In the meantime, though, I’m going to put another layer of long johns on. — City reporter Chad Lawhorn can be reached at 832-6362. Follow him at Twitter.com/clawhorn_ljw
BRIEFCASE • The K-State Research and Extension in Douglas County announced the addition of Marlin Bates to its staff as a horticulture extension agent. Bates previously worked as a horticulture specialist for the University of Missouri Extension in Kansas City, Missouri and as an adjunct professor for Johnson County Community College.
• Anne Underwood, a yoga teacher at the Yoga Keith Srakocic/AP File Photo Center IN THIS NOV. 3, 2010, FILE PHOTO, marchers concerned with water pollution protest against Center of hydraulic fracturing and gas well drilling as they cross the Rachel Carson Bridge on their way Lawrence, through town to the Developing Unconventional Gas (DUG) East convention and exhibirecently tion being held in Pittsburgh. comUnderwood pleted the process as well as pollution from one of three families that gallons of water, sand stray gas or other sub- eventually reached a $1.6 and chemicals into the stances. More than 100 million settlement with a ground to break apart cases of pollution were drilling company. Heath- rock and free the gas. confirmed over the past er McMicken said the Some of that water, five years. state should be forthcom- along with large quanJust hearing the total ing with details. tities of existing unnumber of complaints Over the past 10 derground water, reshocked Heather Mc- years, hydraulic frac- turns to the surface, LEAWOOD (AP)—The Micken, an eastern Penn- turing, or fracking, and it can contain high sylvania homeowner who has led to a boom in levels of salt, drilling Board of Directors of complained about water- oil and natural gas chemicals, heavy met- CorEnergy Infrastructure well contamination that production around als and naturally oc- Trust, Inc. today declared state officials eventually the nation. It has re- curring low-level ra- the Company’s fourth quarter 2013 dividend of confirmed. duced imports and led diation. “Wow, I’m very sur- to hundreds of bilBut some convention- $0.125 per share, consisprised,” said McMicken, lions of dollars in rev- al oil and gas wells are still tent with last quarter. The recalling that she and her enue for companies drilled, so the complaints fourth quarter dividend husband never knew how and landowners, but about water contamina- is payable on January 23, many other people made also created pollution tion can come from them, 2014 to shareholders of resimilar complaints, since fears. too. Experts say the most cord on January 13, 2014. CorEnergy Infrastructhe main source of inforExtracting fuel from common type of pollumation “was just through shale formations re- tion involves methane, ture Trust, Inc. (NYSE: the grapevine.” quires pumping hun- not chemicals from the CORR), primarily owns midstream and downThe McMickens were dreds of thousands of drilling process.
of becoming a certified instructor of the lyengar method. Underwood underwent the process through the Yoga National Association of the U.S. She began practicing yoga in 1981. • Mark Taylor has been hired as vice president of human resource and marketing Taylor at CornerBank, N.A. Taylor a graduate of Southwestern College. CornerBank is a community bank with several locations throughout Kansas, including Lawrence.
CorEnergy declares dividend of $0.125 stream U.S. energy infrastructure assets subject to long-term triple net participating leases with energy companies. These assets include pipelines, storage tanks, transmission lines and gathering systems. The Company’s principal objective is to provide stockholders with an attractive riskadjusted total return, with an emphasis on distributions and long-term distribution growth.