‘An exciting day’ as Wind Surge reveals hotel brand with a new experience for Wichita

The Wind Surge ball club not only negotiated a new ballpark with the city of Wichita in 2018, but it also committed to creating a dynamic development around it, including bringing a distinctive hotel.

Team CEO Jordan Kobritz said a deal with New York-based Dream Hotel Group is the fulfillment of what the club discussed with the city.

“We’ve got something unique,” he said “This is an exciting day.”

Dream Hotel Group chief development officer David Kuperberg said that along with W Hotels, the company was a pioneer in the lifestyle hotel business more than three decades ago.

“Now every hotel company says they’re a lifestyle hotel company.”

A lifestyle hotel is like hotels of old, Kuperberg said of a time more than a century ago when hotels were community gathering spots and not just for guests.

“Then the industry changed,” he said.

Dream Hotel Group and the ball club want “a place for the community to hang out,” Kuperberg said. “A place where you want to eat, drink and have fun.”

The hotel group has different brands, including one called Unscripted Hotels. That’s what the Wichita hotel will be.

There will be a signature restaurant, a coffee bar, a lobby bar and a rooftop lounge with cocktails and light fare. From there, guests will be able to see into most of the stadium.

“You should have a view right into home plate,” said Austin Bradley, vice president of development for Overland Park-based EPC Real Estate Group, which developed the nearby 225 Sycamore apartments at the city’s Delano catalyst site.

The 155-room hotel, which will have seven or eight stories, will be situated between McLean and the Arkansas River.

There will be a fitness center and conference and event space. A pool is under consideration.

Kuperberg said Unscripted Hotels have high design but not the same designs in each city.

“It’s not just a plain vanilla box,” he said. “We like to say we’re in the storytelling business.”

He said the story comes from the community where the company builds.

“Aviation clearly is a story of Wichita,” Kuperberg said. “We also have the baseball team.”

He said it’s a little early to know the Wichita design, but Kuperberg said there’s a creative class in places such as Wichita that is “craving something that we have to offer.” He said the pandemic heightened that.

Bradley said EPC went on a strategic hunt for something different.

“What we didn’t want to do is go get a cookie-cutter vanilla hotel.”

Bradley said it will be a year-round destination not only for Wichita but for the Midwest as well.

He said the goal is to “not simply put heads in beds” but to create an experience.

“You’re getting this boutique, eclectic, high-character space.”

Kobritz said the hotel likely will anchor the development for decades to come.

The hotel is about a $40 million project within an initial $70 million total first phase of the Ballpark District, which is what the club is calling the area around the ballpark. That includes riverfront improvements such as enhanced trails and seating areas.

A $5 million grant from the Kansas Department of Commerce, with money from the American Rescue Plan Act, will pay for those improvements. The grant also requires a 25% match by the city.

Construction of the hotel, a 90,000-square-foot office building with ground-floor retail, a 30,000-square-foot office building with ground-floor retail and a 283-stall parking garage will start later this year and be ready by summer of 2024.

The city is using $8.7 million in property taxes collected in the Delano Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district to pay for the parking garage.

The city also is issuing up to $40 million in industrial revenue bonds (IRBs) for the office buildings, which provides a $906,500 tax exemption on building materials for the ball club and EPC Real Estate. The sales tax exemption does not apply to the hotel building.

Bradley said the architect for the baseball stadium, Overland Park-based DLR Group, was working with Dream in Las Vegas, which is how the club came to be in contact with the company.

He said his team is in talks with potential office tenants, and he said the hotel will be highly desirable for them and their clients.

“It was a very strategic decision as far as who this operator needed to be.”

NAI Martens also is handling leasing for the offices, retail and restaurants with brokers Patrick Ahern, Grant Glasgow and Stephanie Wiens.

Kobritz said Wichita soon will see a vision become reality, and he said that’s a reality that would not have happened with the city’s former 1934 ballpark that was demolished to make way for Riverfront Stadium.

“If I’m looking out my window at Lawrence-Dumont, you can be sure (Dream Hotel Group) wouldn’t be interested in coming here,” he said.

Kobritz said that although Wichita has some great hotels, he thinks Unscripted will be unique.

“They’re going to be doing something very special here in Wichita that we’re all going to be very proud of.”

Contributing: Chance Swaim of The Eagle

This story was originally published June 21, 2022 at 2:01 PM.