by: Wil Day
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — A troubled Wichita landmark is going up for auction.
Efforts to sell the historic Commodore earlier this year proved unsuccessful for Pacific Sands Funds, the company that purchased the building in 2021 for $2.2 million. The 103-unit building is now scheduled to go up for auction later this month with a starting bid of just $450,000.
Built in 1929 as a hotel, the Commodore was designed by Nelle Elizabeth Nichols Peters, an early female modern architecture pioneer in the United States who designed thousands of buildings in Kansas City and across Kansas and Oklahoma.
The nine-story building, which was converted into an apartment building, has 94 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. The nearly 100-year-old building experienced significant plumbing problems in recent years and closed in 2020.
In February, portions of the building’s facade fell to the sidewalk and street below, prompting a response from firefighters and a temporary street closure.
The auction listing shows that the building still requires renovation work, including repairing cracked drain lines, installing baseboard heating for the third through eighth floors, replacing the service and passenger elevators and renovating about 50 apartments.
The auction runs Nov. 17 through Nov. 19.
This article was republished here with the permission of: KSNW-TV