Daily Archives: March 13, 2012

Beer: 30 to open in former Time Out Club

March 13, 20123:14 p.m.

UPDATED — After being laid off from the aircraft industry, then returning – “which I swore I’d never do” – and getting laid off again, Steve Martinez decided he needed to make an investment in his own business.

He’s opening Beer: 30 in the former Time Out Club at 1544 S. Ida. Martinez plans to open by Saturday.

“I don’t want to miss Saint Patrick’s Day.”

The bar will serve food and have pool, karaoke and live bands.

So what’s Beer: 30 mean?

“When it’s Beer: 30, you know it’s time to go hang out with friends,” Martinez says. “I want it to feel like that – like you’re going to your buddy’s house.”

Besides, he says, “Beer 15: just doesn’t have the same ring.”

 

By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , Filed under Bars, New business | Comments Off

You don’t say

March 13, 20122:36 p.m.

“If a camo bathing suit is on your list, you can find it there.”

– Cathy Erickson of Laham Development, one of the developers of Cabela’s, which is opening Wednesday at Laham’s Regency Lakes at 21st and Greenwich

By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , , Filed under New business, Retail, You don't say | Comments Off

Couple seeking own business starts Sign It Out Loud to greet people in their yards

March 13, 20127:00 a.m.

WICHITA — Katie Dexter comes from a family of entrepreneurs and has always wanted her own business. Her 2-year-old son, Brecken, only convinced her more.

“It breaks my heart to leave my son every day.”

So Dexter and her husband, Justin, are starting Sign It Out Loud, a yard greeting business.

“It’s affordable for us to start up because we make everything by hand,” she says.

Dexter says it also means customers get a better rate.

“We can do anything someone wants,” she says. “We kind of pride ourselves on having a wide variety.”

Justin Dexter is a full-time electrician and will keep that job. Katie Dexter is pregnant with their second child and hopes to be able to quit her part-time job after giving birth in September.

“I’m hopeful this will grow into other great opportunities for my family,” she says. “I felt like if I didn’t take a chance and start somewhere, nothing was going to change.”

The Dexters are still finishing some of the items customers can order for yards, such as 5-foot storks, but Katie Dexter is confident they’ll have success once they begin.

“Part of our idea of starting this is we wanted something fun and cheerful for everyone,” she says. “We just want to make people smile, and this does that.”

 

By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , , Filed under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Cummings & Cummings law firm to once again have two Cummings attorneys

March 13, 20125:00 a.m.

WICHITA — Cummings & Cummings is once again going to have a Cummings and a Cummings.

Bill and Nika Cummings started the law firm, which is at 129 E. Second St., in 1998. Nika Cummings left more than four years ago to work as a public defender. Now, she’s returning.

“She’s had really great success as a public defender,” Bill Cummings says of his wife.

She first worked for the Sedgwick County public defender’s office and then the county’s conflict office.

Cummings says his wife won 10 acquittals out of her last 12 cases, “which is just unheard of really.”

When Nika Cummings previously was at the firm, she worked part time there and as Mulvane’s prosecutor while also raising the couple’s four children. Once the kids were in school, she began her full-time public work.

Now, Bill Cummings says, his wife would like to try private practice again – and have the often more lucrative salary that accompanies it.

It’s fine by him, especially since they regularly confer about cases anyway.

“She’s just really good at what she does,” Cummings says. “She’s not only persuasive in the courtroom but … the office as well.”

 

By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , Filed under Downtown, Legal | Comments Off