“Turning 45 back in November, I realized, you know, I’m halfway to 90 now. . . . Now it’s time to see what the next 45 is like.”
— Heroes general manager Darrin Hackney on leaving the hospitality business after 24 years to operate his Darrin Hackney Photography full time
WICHITA — While Jack’s North Hi Carryout has persevered for more than six decades across from North High School, the space just down from it on 13th Street has been a revolving door of restaurants.
Rosa and Roberto Lopez think they can change that with their new Gorditas Durango.
They’ve purchased the newly neon green restaurant where Laura’s Super Tortas was most recently.
The Lopezes have owned 21st Street Carry Out Burgers for the last 14 years.
Rosa Lopez thinks that track record — and her husband’s experience owning La Fiera Restaurant before that — will ensure they can make the new space succeed.
The restaurant, which seats about 32, will be open seven days a week.
The menu will be like what they serve at 21st Street Carry Out Burgers, which — unlike the inherited name suggests — serves gorditas and other Mexican specialties.
A couple of months from now, the Lopezes will close their 21st Street restaurant, which they lease. They wanted to move to own their own building.
Rosa Lopez says she’s aware the new building has a bit of a reputation for being a cursed space.
“I know, but we are not like the other people.”
WICHITA — With Satchel Creek Steaks leaving Cambridge Market for Andover, as Have You Heard? reported Monday, Tad Snarenberger saw an opportunity for his Sports Time Fan Shop.
“Them vacating is very advantageous for me,” he says.
He’s in his fifth year at the center at 21st and Webb, where he has about 4,000 square feet and sells “anything you can stick a college logo on.”
Snarenberger is taking Satchel Creek’s former 1,900 square feet.
“My issue is I don’t have enough space to display properly,” he says.
For instance, he has numerous types of Shocker shirts all squeezed into one rack.
“Look, we’re just too tight.”
Snarenberger says he wants to “give KU, K-State and Wichita State University their due.”
Each school will have its own wall once construction is done.
Snarenberger will create two arches in the wall that currently divides his store from the former Satchel Creek space.
He says his “game plan” will be to make that new space the House Divided, with one wall for KU and one for K-State.
That will allow him more room in the store’s original space for WSU items.
Construction will start this week, and the new space will be ready in about three weeks.