Work planned to improve access, parking in Commerce district

As one developer firms up plans for a new project in the Commerce Street arts district south of Intrust Bank Arena downtown, another is working to improve access to the two-block-long neighborhood that is home to artists, apartment dwellers and a variety of businesses.

David Farha, who in 2009 developed the 25-unit Finn Lofts in the former Finn Distributing building at 430 S. Commerce, has bought most of the vacant land to the east of Commerce Street in order to pave an area that is now a big patch of dirt between the backside of the neighborhood’s collection of turn-of-the-century brick buildings and elevated train tracks.

Farha won’t pave the area. He’s granting an easement to the city, which will provide for a paved alley and parking there. The project was approved by the Wichita City Council in December and is in the design stage.

It’s an important project, developers and city officials said, for the Commerce neighborhood, which in roughly six years has seen three redevelopment projects with a fourth planned.

The paved alley, Farha said, will provide better access and “circulation” around the neighborhood, whose narrow, brick-filled Commerce Street terminates at a public parking lot underneath the Kellogg flyover.

It will provide a number of other benefits as well, not the least of which is the appearance of the terrain on the east side of the buildings that line the east side of Commerce Street. At present, it’s dirt, some brush and debris, and some Dumpsters.

“Obviously this will dramatically change the look back here,” Bruce Rowley, CEO of RSA Marketing Services, said on a tour of the area earlier this week.

Late last year RSA moved its offices into a former warehouse building at 400 S. Commerce. “It will be great to have the improved aesthetic,” Rowley said.

The project is being designed by engineering firm Baughman Co., said Scott Knebel, downtown revitalization manager for the Wichita-Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Department.

“Ideally we would get it done this year,” said Knebel, who added that at this point he’s not certain that will be the case.

He said the installation of the alley and parking is part of a $2 million project that also includes converting St. Francis Street, which is one block west of Commerce, from a one-way road going south to a two-way road between Waterman and Lincoln.

The paved alley should improve access for businesses and residents on Commerce, Knebel said. It should also alleviate parking issues on the narrow street, especially on nights when Final Friday is underway and there is an event at the nearby arena, he said.

More importantly, Knebel said, the paved alley will provide the neighborhood a second point of access when it comes time to close Commerce for some much-needed work. He said Commerce has “major drainage issues” and the street, which is deteriorating because of the drainage problem, will need to be torn up to fix both issues.

“We haven’t figured out how to do that without closing off (Commerce) street,” Knebel said.

Craig Slawson of Colorado-based Slawson Energy said the Commerce project is “very critical” for him to proceed with his plans for 518-520 Commerce. He said he plans to spend $3 million to convert the 30,000 square feet – spread among three buildings – into 24 loft apartments and main-floor open space that could serve as an art gallery, event space or “incubator” for artists and designers.

“I need to have that back access to continue my development,” he said.

Slawson said his project, to be called the Commerce Farm Club, is in the permitting process.

Slawson’s would be the fourth renovation project on Commerce since 2009. The first was Farha’s 25,000-square-foot Finn Lofts, which was followed by Commerce Street Lofts at 414 and 416 S. Commerce. Rowley, along with Mike Snyder and Transpacific Real Estate, owns the RSA building at 400 S. Commerce. They renovated 5,200 of the building’s 7,700 square feet before moving in last year.

Rowley, whose property is on the northern end of Commerce, said he and his partners will also be giving up some of their unfinished parking lot for installation of the alley.

He and other Commerce Street developers hope the paving improvements will go beyond improving access to the area.

“We’re doing this for the bigger picture, for the neighborhood to flourish,” Farha said.

This story was originally published March 11, 2015 at 5:26 PM with the headline "Work planned to improve access, parking in Commerce district."