Yoder Meats owners are purchasing YB Meats

Nov. 3, 20093:17 p.m.

WICHITA — Only one week ago, Yoder Meats owner Alan Waggoner called YB Meats owner Eric Kauffman to see if he might be interested in selling his store.

Kauffman was, and now the longtime store at 798 N. West St. will operate as Yoder Meats. It officially opens Wednesday (though there may have been a sale or two in the last day or so) and the deal will close in January.

“He was motivated to be done, and I was motivated to take over,” says Waggoner, who owns a meat plant and retail shop in Yoder with his wife, Carol.

If a one-week turnaround seems like a crazy kind of time frame, Waggoner agrees.

“Yeah, way crazy.”

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By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , , , , Filed under Normandie Center, Retail, Uncategorized, West side | Comments (6)

Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets still on track

Sept. 16, 20096:17 a.m.

WICHITA — Wal-Mart’s plans to bring its Neighborhood Market concept to Wichita are still progressing, but there don’t appear to be any done deals yet.

“We’re still under contract,” says Chris Goebel of Star Lumber.

Goebel hopes to sell his property at Central and Maize where he once planned the Gaslight Creek commercial development on more than 11 acres.

“We’ve had to do some extensions,” Goebel says of the contract.

That’s because there’s “a wee little bit of an environmental issue.”

Goebel says there are leaking underground storage tanks on another site — not his — that are of concern.

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By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , , , , , , , , Filed under Leases, Real estate, Retail | Comments (14)

YB Meats GM explains Normandie closing

Sept. 1, 20092:06 p.m.

WICHITA — As we reported Monday, YB Meats at Normandie Center closed after business Saturday.

Now, general manager Mike Wedman explains why.

“Things were going well, then all of a sudden, we took just kind of a downturn,” he says.

“We couldn’t really place a finger on one particular thing,” Wedman says. He does think overall, the store is a “victim of the economy, possibly.”

“It’s kind of the way it is all over town,” Wedman says.

The west-side YB Meats has seen a decrease in business, too, though not as much.

At Normandie, Wedman says, “It just got to the point where it didn’t make sense anymore to keep struggling through.”

Instead, he says, it made more sense to “regroup and focus all of our efforts to . . . keep being successful on the west side.”

By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , Filed under Normandie Center, Retail | Comments (1)

YB Meats at Normandie Center is closed

Aug. 31, 20095:51 p.m.

WICHITA — After about two years in business, YB Meats in Normandie Center at Central and Woodlawn has closed.

The store’s last day in business apparently was Saturday.

Owner Eric Kauffman couldn’t be reached for comment.

When he opened the store in 2007, Kauffman said, “The biggest drive (to do it) is the number of people who come over to the west store and say they wished we were on the east side.”

For 21 years, there was a lone YB Meats at 798 N. West St.

That location is still open.

By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , Filed under Normandie Center, Retail | Comments (5)

Gessler Drug Co. to relocate from Normandie Center to Lincoln Heights Village area

Aug. 4, 20095:26 p.m.

gessleraugWICHITA — Gessler Drug Co. is heading home.

So says Hal Schwarz, who is relocating the store from Normandie Center at Central and Woodlawn to where AAA Kansas used to be next to Il Vicino near Douglas and Oliver.

That’s one corner over from where Gessler first opened in Wichita in 1938. Watermark Books & Cafe is there today.

Schwarz says Gessler was one of the original anchor tenants in what became Lincoln Heights Village in 1949.

When he recently was looking for new space, Schwarz says the 4,300-square-foot location he found “just stood out far and above anything else we had seen.”

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By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , , , , , , , , Filed under Lincoln Heights Village, Medical, Normandie Center, Retail, Television | Comments (2)

Gessler Drug Co. to leave Normandie and open two new stores

July 14, 20093:04 p.m.

It looks like Wal-Mart’s possible move to Normandie Center at Central and Woodlawn is forcing at least one longtime business to leave earlier than planned.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Hal Schwarz, president of Gessler Drug Co., who hopes to open two new stores after moving out of Normandie in August.

Schwarz was manager of Gessler when it moved to Normandie in 1965.

“It wasn’t that long ago,” he says. “I still see people I saw that first year.”

But a while back, he decided to go month-to-month on his lease instead of renewing it.

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By Carrie Rengers | Tags: , , , , , , , , , Filed under Leases, Normandie Center, Retail | Comments (7)

You don’t say

June 4, 200911:03 a.m.

“I was horrified at first, but it looks like a Yuppie version of Wal-Mart.”

– Best of Times owner Nancy Robinson on the possibility of a Neighborhood Market coming to Normandie Center at Central and Woodlawn where her shop is

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