Working with the Architecture
The top four floors of the 5-story garage are split between parking areas and long, narrow apartments. All residents have front-door parking. Each floor has 10 apartments on the east side with terraces overlooking Broadway Street and one uniquely shaped apartment on the west side with rounded, curving walls from the existing car ramps. (These four west-side units were the first to be rented because they are slightly larger and very unique with their rounded walls.) That’s one example of being forced to embrace part of the floor plan that the building already had, culminating in an apartment that no architect would ever purposely design in new construction.
Front-door parking offers a secure feeling. Residents are able to use a door opener or a code to get past the first-floor, secured-access gate. Downtown Wichita is safe, but there’s still a lot of people who aren’t used to that kind of urban living—especially in Kansas.
All the apartments are one-bedroom units with full-size kitchens. The kitchen cabinets and countertops utilize repurposed toolboxes and industrial material, fitting in with the urban garage theme.
The apartments have polished concrete floors and concrete walls. Each unit features an accent wall painted one of the three official interior colors of the complex: terra cotta, green or gold.
There’s an open-air trash chute on each floor of the garage, where residents can dump bags of trash, letting height and gravity deposit them in a dumpster below.
The building also has a first-floor common area with a 24-hour fitness center, dog wash and entertainment room. In that common room, there are tinted windows original to the garage and painted parking lines still visible on the floor.
Apartment rent prices range between $800 to $1,000 per month, depending on what floor the apartment is on. Each unit varies between 650 to 670 square feet. As of press time, only eight units of 44 still are available for rent in the building, which contains a mix of retired people; young, single professionals; and military members who work at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita.
Vision for the Future
Bokeh Development owns several renovated Wichita properties and the firm’s representatives prefer to retain the character of the buildings by repurposing and bringing new life. There’s hope that Broadway Autopark will be the catalyst for future development along the Broadway corridor, which is the primary north-south spine of downtown. In fact, there has been a significant surge in all downtown development projects in Wichita, including the new Spaghetti Works District with its apartments, city park and mixed-use development; WAVE, a unique outdoor venue; a future medical school; and FireWorx, a former firehouse being reimagined into a shared workspace.
Retrofit Team
Architect: Shelden Architecture Inc., Wichita, Kan.; Stan Shelden; Daniel Gensch
Developer: Bokeh Development, Wichita
General Contractor: Farha Construction Inc., Wichita
MEP Engineers: Integrated Consulting Engineers Inc., Wichita
Structural Engineers: Hartwell Structural Engineering, Wichita, (316) 683-6644, and MKEC, Wichita
Historic Preservation Specialist: Spencer Preservation, Wamego, Kan.
HVAC Subcontractor: Waldorf Riley Heating & Cooling, Arkansas City, Kan.
Electrical Subcontractor: Tejeda Electric, Wichita, (316) 832-9558
Sign Refurbishment: Ron’s Sign Co., Wichita
Materials
HVAC: Halcyon from Fujitsu
Flooring: Reflector from Elite Crete Systems
Cabinets: NewAge Performance 2.0 Series from NewAge Products Inc.
Interior and Exterior Paint: Sherwin-Williams
Patio Doors: 60- by 80-inch chestnut bronze, exterior/white, interior Builders Vinyl Sliding Patio Door from Jeld-Wen
Photos: Essential Images Photography
1 Comment
That’s a great retrofit example. I couldn’t find the finished facade look but I think some GFRC panels could be utilised to maintain that concrete character of the building.