The only completed skyscraper designed by the master architect Frank Lloyd Wright is being listed for sale only 18 months after it last changed hands.
Art News reported Price Tower, a 19-story, 221-foot-high mixed-use property in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is being listed by its owner The Copper Tree Group, led by Anthem and Cynthia Blanchard. The new owner promised a $10 million investment in the building as part of its “commitment to responsible stewardship,” with a goal of attracting tech industry tenants to create a “Silicon Ranch” that would have included a boutique hotel and high-end restaurants.
The Blanchards acquired Price Tower for a token sum of $10 – but the property was burdened with $600,000 worth of debt that grew to $2 million in the last 18 months. The Blanchards’ situation was exacerbated by another venture, their blockchain firm HeraSoft, which became insolvent and could not pay its workforce.
Complicating matters further was the decision to sell heritage furnishings from Price Tower that Wright specifically designed for the building – the sale of those items is prohibited under preservation agreements with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, which is reportedly considering legal options to address the building’s fate.
The property’s current tenants – a hotel, rooftop bar, restaurant, arts organizations, and a local magazine – have been told to move out by the end of the month.
“We didn’t know what we were getting in to,” said Cynthia Blanchard in a radio interview regarding the purchase of Price Tower.
Price Tower was built in 1956 and is only one of two vertically-oriented office properties designed by Wright – the other is the 14-center Research Tower at the Johnson Wax headquarters complex in Racine, Wisconsin. The building was commissioned by Harold C. Price of the H. C. Price Company, a local oil pipeline and chemical firm, and was adapted from the design for a Manhattan apartment tower that was planned in the 1920s but scrapped at the start of the Great Depression. Phillips Petroleum acquired the building in 1981 for its offices. The building was donated to the Price Tower Arts Center in 2000 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2007.
Photo: Emersonbiggins85 / Wikimedia Commons
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“Complicating matters further was the decision to sell heritage furnishings from Price Tower that Wright specifically designed for the building – the sale of those items is prohibited under preservation agreements with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, which is reportedly considering legal options to address the building’s fate.“
What a bunch of STUPID people who own this bldg.
Buy it for $10-, more than triple the debt, plunder the
FLW Designed Furnishings, throw the tenants out, and then act like they’re good stewards …. even tho ” they didn’t know what they were getting into”
I hope the Wright Foundation sues the Blanchards blind for selling off the decor.
They deserve all the pain the Wright Foundation can inflict.
Poor business practices should be brought to light.
The Blanchards sound like they went to school at Rump University.