By Audrey Jensen – Senior Reporter, Wichita Business Journal
A long-vacant, three-story building that was constructed in the 1920s as a Masonic lodge in El Dorado will be getting a second life as a residential property.
Manhattan-based Frontier Development Group wants to turn the 20,000 square-foot building, located along El Dorado’s Main Street, into 13 moderate-income housing units with ground-floor commercial.
It will be the first project that the vertically-integrated real estate developer and manager, which focuses on historic preservation and infill, has tackled in the greater Wichita region. Frontier Development has completed 140,000 square feet in historic rehabilitation and developed 224 units across Kansas.
Tyler Holloman, a principal at Frontier, said they were looking for projects in small communities outside of Wichita and learned about the historic building while on a tour of El Dorado.
“When you drive by that building, it sits right at the corner of an intersection, so it really stands out,” Holloman said. “It’s a tall building, there’s a lot of windows, there’s a lot of street frontage with having two primary sides to it, and so understanding what that building would have looked like when it was first built and seeing the potential of what it could look like is what really jumped out at us.”
He contacted the building’s listing broker, Zac Sundgren of SunGroup Real Estate and Appraisals, and kickstarted a two-year process to secure funding and plan approvals for the revitalization of the property. Being part of El Dorado’s efforts to bolster its downtown area was also exciting for Frontier Development Group, Holloman said.
“In a lot of communities we work in in Kansas, there’s really cool buildings, there’s really neat architecture in a lot of main streets across Kansas,” Holloman said. “Oftentimes the upper floors, just like in this building, have sat empty for half a century or more, so the trick that we found is layering the different resources, different tax credits and different funding sources into the project in order to fully renovate and activated these upper floors.
“Once they’re activated, we’ve found that there’s huge demand for these spaces because they’re unique, oftentimes they’re affordable and people want to live in these downtowns across Kansas, so we think it’ll be the same in El Dorado.”
The $4.38 million project will be financed through a mix of housing credits and funds, as well as up to $300,000 in gap financing from the city of El Dorado and El Dorado Inc. that was approved by the El Dorado City Commission in January. The Kansas Housing Resources Corp. is providing the moderate-income housing grant and housing investor tax credits.
Work is anticipated to start on the El Dorado property in 2026 followed by completion by late 2027.
As a moderate-income housing project, rents will serve households that make between 60% to 150% of the area median income as opposed to low-income housing, which is for renters who make below 60% of the area median income. The developer is offering moderate income through a state program that started in 2012.
Frontier Development is working with Gravity Works Architecture on the project and will use its Frontier Construction division as the general contractor.
Holloman said he has had success in developing historic properties due to the state’s robust tax credit program.
“You really have to make sure your Ts are crossed and Is are dotted,” he said. “Developers that maybe don’t have experience with historic properties, my advice would be to really do your research and make sure that you’ve got a historic consultant, architect and attorney that all have familiarity with these types of projects, because there is a lot of red tape and there’s a lot of different processes that you need to be aware of.”
Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2026/01/13/el-dorado-main-street-redevelop-building-frontier.html
