Have You Heard?

WICHITA — After about five years of courtship with various suitors, it looks like Union Station finally may be engaged again.

Sources say Occidental Management has signed a letter of intent to buy the downtown property that Cox Communications owns and where it previously had its Kansas headquarters.

“We continue to have discussions with interested parties,” says Jay Allbaugh, Cox’s vice president of government and public affairs for the Cox Central Region.

Allbaugh won’t say anything further, and Occidental chairman and CEO Gary Oborny says he can’t comment on the situation.

Union Station and its 111,000-square-foot campus first went on the market in spring 2008, about a year after Cox left for bigger offices at 901 George Washington Blvd.

The list price for the former train station at 701 E. Douglas is $6.4 million.

Clay Center businessman Phil Frigon’s $5.5 million, 2009 deal to buy the campus to create a mixed-use development collapsed when he failed to reach an agreement for the city to lease parking from him for Intrust Bank Arena.

A mixed-use development that potentially would include retail, office and residential space and would help further revitalize downtown has been the top hope of potential uses for Union Station.

Oborny and Occidental have a history of converting older properties into new developments, most notably with the former Northrock 6 Theater at 32nd Street and North Rock Road. They converted the theater into an 80,000-square-foot, Class A office complex where Occidental now has its headquarters.

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WICHITA — Five months after Alltite and MobileCal founder Tom Smith closed on a deal to buy a 14,000-square-foot building at 141 S. Rock Island near The Wichita Eagle, he’s now selling it.

“To renovate the building the way I was going to renovate, it just didn’t appraise for what it was going to cost to build it,” Smith says.

“I was really disappointed that it didn’t work out.”

In January, Have You Heard? first reported Smith had a contract on the building, which was built in 1901 as a livery stable in conjunction with the adjacent Union Station.

Smith currently leases space on the east side for his companies.

Alltite sells industrial bolting equipment and services to heavy industrial plants. MobileCal is a mobile calibration lab he developed to service industrial equipment on site.

Smith had planned to create a loft-style office for his new space.

The appraisal on the renovation “was kind of the last piece of the puzzle,” Smith says.

He says financing was contingent on it.

“The economies aren’t there.”

Now, he’s trying to decide if he’ll build or look for another existing structure to transform into his offices.

“I’m looking everywhere,” Smith says.

He says several people are interested in the Rock Island space. Smith says potential buyers would renovate the space.

“So something good is going to happen to that building.”