An iconic auction
By: Bert Belanger//Guest Columnist//March 7, 2019
Suffering from cabin fever during this last frigid weekend, I left my warm fireplace and drove to northwest Oklahoma City, spending an hour touring four high-rise condominium units that will be sold in a (mostly) absolute auction on Tuesday and Wednesday. An email ad had caught my eye, mainly due to the size of this 29-condo portfolio being offered through National Auction Group Inc. While I had heard of these multi-unit auctions in places like Miami, one in OKC had me intrigued.
The Founders Tower indeed once towered by itself alongside this stretch of Northwest Expressway, catty-corner to the Integris Baptist Hospital complex. It remains an iconic example of some of OKC’s best art deco architecture, and my tour on this cold Sunday afternoon took my mind back to 1983, my first year as a newly minted real estate lawyer.
In the 1970s through the early ‘80s, this corridor was red-hot in terms of sexy commercial real estate development. The area boasted a brand-new full-service Marriott Hotel, a slick Barnes & Noble wannabe (Borders Books), the Continental Theatre and the neomodern Founders Bank. I recall sipping a Scotch in the Founders Tower’s penthouse restaurant when it still spun, albeit slowly, and I enjoyed my share of fried chicken and cream gravy at the Queen Ann Cafeteria on its ground floor.
All of those old memories flooded back to me as I walked through two of the largest penthouse residences, and then a two-bedroom unit and two single-bedroom units on lower floors. When the Founders Tower went through a complete overhaul and massive renovation in 2007, I was too distracted by my own endeavors near downtown Oklahoma City to pay much attention, but I found during my tour that the resulting finishes and amenities are still impressive, even a decade later. An inviting entry lobby, fitness center, covered parking and swimming pools were expected, but I was blown away by the views from the two penthouse balconies; one framed downtown and the Devon Energy Center in the distance, but the real money shot was the view of Lake Hefner to the north and west.
It will be interesting to watch the marketplace work on Tuesday and Wednesday; while I won’t be bidding, I’ll wager that several opportunistic buyers will walk away with some attractive real estate.
Bert Belanger is a broker with Adept Commercial Real Estate and an of counsel attorney with Riggs Abney.