Downtown in Focus
Third Quarter 2012
story by DEREK HELMS
photos by STEVEN HERTZOG

Downtown Lawrence Inc.

Downtown Painted - photo by Steven Hertzog

In all likelihood, Norman Rockwell would love downtown Lawrence. With blocks and blocks of unique shops, dinners sitting on restaurant patios and corners full of cascading flowers, Downtown
Lawrence is as close to a living history museum as you can get in town. Second maybe only to the University of Kansas, Downtown Lawrence is the city’s largest attraction.

Since its inception as a working group of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Lawrence Incorporated has evolved into a free-standing organization working to enhance, support and develop the businesses located in the blocks surrounding Massachusetts Street.

Win Cambell, long-time owner and operator of downtown furniture store Winfield House, fondly recalls the organization’s beginning. “Back in the 1960’s a group of businesses worked with the Chamber to get some parking lots built on Vermont Street and New Hampshire Street,” Cambell says. “The group was comprised of only downtown business owners, so I guess that was the very beginning of Downtown Lawrence as an organization.”

At the time, the group was a small division of the Chamber of Commerce. No dues were paid, and new members were not recruited. As development spread away from the downtown area, and strip malls were built, the casual group decided to organize and protect their retail market share.

“We saw what these new shopping centers were doing to promote themselves,” Cambell says. “Not just the new centers in Lawrence, but malls in the region were promoting themselves with planned events. We thought ‘well why don’t we do that?’ So we did.”

Share.

13 Comments

  1. Hi, this weekend is nice in favor of me, since this moment
    i am reading this fantastic informative article
    here at my residence.

  2. We absolutely love your blog and find many of your post’s to be what precisely I’m looking for.
    can you offer guest writers to write content for yourself?
    I wouldn’t mind producing a post or elaborating on some of the subjects you write concerning here.
    Again, awesome web site!

  3. I simply couldn’t leave your website before suggesting that I extremely loved the usual
    information a person supply on your visitors?
    Is gonna be again regularly to inspect new posts

  4. Quality content is the crucial to invite the users to pay a quick
    visit the site, that’s what this website is providing.

  5. With havin so much content and articles do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright violation?
    My site has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either created myself or outsourced but it seems a
    lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my permission. Do you know any methods to help prevent content
    from being stolen? I’d truly appreciate it.

  6. Wow, wonderful blog layout! How long have you been blogging for?
    you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your site is wonderful,
    let alone the content!

  7. Heya i am for the first time here. I came across this board and I find
    It truly useful & it helped me out much. I hope to
    give something back and help others like you aided me.

  8. Admiring the dedication you put into your blog and detailed
    information you offer. It’s good to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same unwanted rehashed information. Wonderful read!
    I’ve saved your site and I’m adding your RSS feeds to my Google account.

  9. Hi it’s me, I am also visiting this web site daily, this web site is truly nice and the
    people are genuinely sharing pleasant thoughts.

Leave A Reply

Contact to Listing Owner

Captcha Code