County plans to auction former hotel

The vacant, dilapidated, nine-story former hotel building that stands along the gateway to downtown Topeka appears to have been abandoned.

Delinquent taxes on the former Red Carpet Inn & Suites, located at 914 S.E. Madison near westbound Interstate 70, are nearing a quarter of a million dollars, according to the website for the Shawnee County Appraiser’s Office.

The county plans to auction off that building, said county counselor Jim Crowl. The owner of the building owes more than $233,000 in delinquent property taxes and hasn’t made a payment since 2014.

Rhiannon Friedman, president of Downtown Topeka Inc., sees those occurrences as potentially allowing for future development at that site.

“We hope that a future purchase becomes a catalytic project for the community and resolves a significant area of blight,” she said Wednesday. “The real estate has genuine potential, and we look forward to it being in the hands of the right developer.”

But Topeka planning director Bill Fiander suggested Wednesday that the property’s close proximity to the Shawnee County Jail, 501 S.E. 8th, hurts its potential to bring about “game-changing private investment at our gateway.”

He noted that a civic development plan created late last year by his department suggests relocating city and county law enforcement — and possibly judicial — facilities to 914 S.E. Madison from their current sites.

“Law enforcement uses (and maybe court uses) could become more natural fits in the shadow of the jail both operationally and land use wise,” Fiander said.

The plan to which he referred also outlines potential uses for other buildings in the immediate vicinity, including suggesting the vacant former Topeka Capital-Journal building at 616 S.E. Jefferson be “converted for local government use down the road.”

The building at 914 S.E. Madison appears to have been abandoned, said Mike Haugen, property maintenance manager for the city of Topeka.

The building was constructed in 1969 and is owned by Dickinson, N.D.-based CPE Topeka Kansas 1031 Exchange 32984 LLC, according to records from the website of Shawnee County Appraiser Steve Bauman.

The white concrete-and-steel structure has been vacant since 2005 and was gutted in 2011, about a year after its current owner bought it, according to Topeka Capital-Journal archives.

Those archives identify the specific owner as Bill Patel, of Dickinson, N.D. They say that until 2018 he fixed — or paid to fix — any problems Topeka’s city government identified at the former hotel in citations it issued alleging violations of city building codes.

But Patel appears to have since abandoned the property, Haugen told The Capital-Journal.

Patel didn’t return a telephone message left Wednesday at a hotel he owns in Dickinson.

The city since September 2018 has issued six citations for code violations involving weeds and sanitation to the property at 914 S.E. Madison, Haugen said.

“The city had to abate the property all six times,” he said. “The owner has not paid the bills associated with the property.”

The city also sought to prosecute a property maintenance case involving 914 S.E. Madison in 2017 but was unable to locate the owner, Haugen said.

Meanwhile, county appraiser’s office records show property taxes for that address have gone unpaid from 2015 through 2020, with the amount owed totaling $233,702.22.

Shawnee County Commissioners Kevin Cook, Aaron Mays and Bill Riphahn voted 3-0 on Feb. 27, 2020, to authorize Crowl’s office to begin judicial tax foreclosure proceedings against scores of properties, including 914 S.E. Madison.

Crowl’s office then filed a lawsuit on March 3, 2020, identifying 136 delinquent properties being considered for foreclosure, including 914 S.E. Madison. Taxes for some of those properties have since been paid, resulting in their being removed from the list, but the former Red Carpet Inn & Suites building remains on that list.

That property has an estimated value of $690,000, including $224,360 for the land and $465,640 for the structure, according to the website of Bauman’s office.

Shawnee County each year from 2009 through 2019 held an auction on the first Tuesday in September in which it sold properties for which outstanding property taxes hadn’t been paid. Owners could avoid having those properties sold by paying their property tax bills up until 5 p.m. on the day before the sale.

But last year’s auction wasn’t held because of COVID-19, while this year’s auction date hasn’t yet been set, Crowl said.

Kansas statute enables counties to sell delinquent properties at auction if the owner fails to pay county property taxes on them within two years of the due date for commercial property owners and three years of the due date for residential property owners.

The process of arranging for the county to auction off 914 S.E. Madison was considerably more complex and detailed than for most properties, which is why it took longer than usual for that to happen, Crowl said.

Tim Hrenchir, Topeka Capital-Journal USA TODAY NETWORK