WICHITA — Moving is always a pain, especially without a phone.
Just ask Tim Witsman.
The president of the Wichita Independent Business Association called to cancel the group’s phone number at its North Waco address and then move it to WIBA’s new headquarters at the Farmers and Bankers Building at 200 E. First St.
The cancellation part worked, but the transfer didn’t.
WIBA’s temporary number is 316-201-3264.
Witsman says the old number is in a sort of limbo.
“We now have astronauts and channelers trying to get it back.”
WICHITA — It appears the Wichita Independent Business Association may be close to making a deal with the Minnesota Guys for new downtown space.
WIBA has sold its North Waco building to lawyers Craig Shultz and Kurt Holmes of Spyglass Properties as a cost-saving measure.
Last week, WIBA president Tim Witsman sent an e-mail to some WIBA members acknowledging that last month they’d authorized him to sign a lease with Inter-Faith Ministries for space in its building at Market and Murdock.
He said that almost immediately he received another offer for the first floor of the Farmers and Bankers Building at 200 E. First St., which the Minnesota Guys own.
WIBA would take about 2,200 square feet of former bank space, which includes a 1930s-style boardroom.
The office includes free phone and Internet service.
In the e-mail, Witsman told members that the cost “is less than half of what other first rate facilities were leasing for.”
Witsman doesn’t want to discuss the potential deal.
“It is not settled.”
WICHITA — The Wichita Independent Business Association unveiled it’s almost 8,000-square-foot approximately $1.2 million building at 445 N. Waco four years ago.
Now, due to the economy, the board this week has decided to sell it.
“There’s a process going on,” says president Tim Witsman. “It’s not complete.”
WIBA has had an offer on the building. Witsman won’t disclose the potential buyer.
“There’s some people that are very prideful about the building, and that’s understandable,” Witsman says. “But I think the general view is, no, the important thing is what we do.
“We don’t want to get in the position where we’re cutting the things we provide,” he says. “By doing this, we ensure we don’t have to do that.”
WIBA is a nonprofit, but it also has the for-profit WIBA Insurance Services, and business is down.
“There are people who feel passionately that they would prefer to wait and see . . . a better economy,” Witsman says.
“The board’s real determination is we’re going to protect our reserves,” he says. “The building was simply too great of cost for the kind of incomes we had. It doesn’t work in this new environment.”
WIBA most likely would not lease back space from the potential new owner.
Witsman says WIBA will be at the building for at least several more months.
“I just don’t know after that.”
“I got Cs in college, and I’ve got my own jet and my own boat. Don’t tell me it’s not about luck.”
– Jack DeBoer, who spoke at the Wichita Independent Business Association’s March luncheon Wednesday and downplayed the role of education and intelligence in business success
“It is the most highly regulated deregulated business out there.”
— Wichita Airport Authority air service and business development manager Valerie Wise, who spoke to the Wichita Independent Business Association today and fielded a question about whether the airline industry should have been deregulated
“Along the way, I had two kids and lost 185 pounds — yes, I’ve been divorced nearly two years now.”
– KPTS, Channel 8, president and chief executive Michele Gors Paris, who made an ex-husband joke when speaking at the Wichita Independent Business Association Women’s Alliance Luncheon today