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Gleaming new medical school also is a step back in time to the Innes Department Store

With gleaming new white marble floors, an 8-foot contemporary chandelier and two-story ceilings, the entrance to the new Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine is airy and thoroughly modern.

However, it also is a step back in time for anyone who ever visited the Innes Department Store or the Macy’s or Dillard’s stores that followed in its place.

The former entrance to Innes at the northwest corner of William and Broadway — the same one that you can see in pictures where shoppers pressed against glass doors eagerly waiting to get in for Christmas sales — is the school’s reception area. It’s on the 150,000-square-foot six-story side of the original 1927 Innes store.

Though the fixtures are modern, the tile that developer Sudha Tokala chose looks like it could belong in a 1920s department store.

The school also incorporates a 1947, eight-story addition to the original Innes space, which is about 160,000 square feet.

There were few recognizable features left in the buildings after the city converted them to offices in the late 1980s. Stucco replaced metal awning on the store’s ground-floor windows, many of which became lost behind the stucco.

The renovation mixes new metal awning with some of the original wrought iron decoration around the windows.

Real estate developer Sudha Tokala is redeveloping the former Innes Department Store downtown for the Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine. Tokala uncovered this travertine tile staircase during the construction process.
Real estate developer Sudha Tokala is redeveloping the former Innes Department Store downtown for the Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine. Tokala uncovered this travertine tile staircase during the construction process.

Through her demolition of the office space, Tokala discovered the store’s former mezzanine, which technically makes the buildings seven and nine stories.

The city had lowered the ceiling “to where it was sort of dungeonlike,” said Nick Kraus, vice president of Philadelphia-based Heritage Consulting Group.

“You wouldn’t have known that the first floor was a grand two-story space,” he said. “We’ve brought back that larger volume of space.”

Tokala hired Heritage as she worked with the Kansas Historical Society and the National Park Service, which reviews rehabilitation work and approves tax credits. She had to run every change past both in order to qualify for historic tax credits.

Tokala won’t receive money from the credits until her projects are completed. She expects the credits will amount to about 30% of her total $80 million renovation of the two school buildings and three others she’s renovating adjacent to them.

The state and federal agencies dictated a lot of the changes.

For instance, the Park Service didn’t want the industrial look Tokala considered at one point with its warehouse feel and exposed mechanics.

The Historical Society directed her to preserve the mezzanine and its sight lines to Broadway, which is a feature she now loves.

“This is how it was,” Tokala said. “There’s miles and miles of glass in this building.”

Except she’s added what she called a jewel box in the middle of the two-story first floor. It’s an open 4,000-square-foot pad connected to the prominent columns that dot the ground level.

“We call it the loft coffee shop area,” Tokala said.

It’s meant to be a relaxing place for students and faculty to lounge. There also will be a library nearby on the mezzanine along with open study areas all around.

Decisions, decisions

The columns and mezzanine are the notable parts of the original building, which was made from concrete construction.

The 1947 addition was constructed with steel, which means there are fewer columns.

“Because of steel construction, we were able to do larger rooms on that side,” Tokala said.

That’s where a 280-person two-story lecture hall is, and it’s where Tokala made another discovery. There previously had been a dramatic curved stairway into that first floor area off the Market Street entrance. (The two buildings run a block along William from Broadway to Market.) It’s one of the places Innes used to have fashion shows.

“On Fridays, (Innes) would actually have women model the dresses that they were going to sell that weekend,” Tokala said. “We discovered it, and only part of it was there.”

The staircase, made of travertine tile, opened onto the room. Tokala couldn’t keep that flowing pattern since it now opens onto the lecture hall, but she polished what she was able to salvage, found matching tile and rebuilt much of the staircase.

Historical specifications wouldn’t allow for wood or wood-look flooring or paneling since the original buildings didn’t have it, although there was some around the main bank of elevators, so Tokala put wood paneling there again.

The school doesn’t need all five elevators at the bank, so one is just for show since Tokala had to preserve the original look.

Tokala not only has had to run all of her decisions past state and federal agencies, she’s been involved in virtually every decision of the renovation, including the smallest details like the matte finish on the marble floors.

“I don’t like it shiny.”

What about the tea room?

When Tokala first toured the Finney building, she rushed to the sixth floor, excited to see a much-loved former Wichita icon: the Innes Tea Room.

Much to her dismay, the city had demolished any remnants of it.

The Innes Tea Room at the Innes Department Store in downtown Wichita retained a reputation as a fashionable eating place into the 1960s. Sudha Tokala, who is redeveloping the building for an osteopathy school, was disappointed to find no remnants of the room. However, she did remove a faux ceiling to reveal 16-foot ceilings as they had been when ladies lunched in the space and watched fashion shows.

She did, however, remove a faux ceiling to reveal 16-foot ceilings as they had been when ladies lunched in the space and watched fashion shows — often as little girls on their first outings with their mothers, and later as adults themselves.

The school will use floors 1 through 5 of both buildings. The remaining floors will have a focus on other education-related tenants.

The sidewalks in front of the buildings will be redone this month with decorative details, and planters and benches will be installed.

Tokala estimates that the entire restoration of the two buildings likely will cost $40 million by the time she’s finished.

She said she’s fortunate that she signed most of her contracts before the pandemic, so that’s saved her substantial time and money, which could have been 30% higher or more.

Kraus said it might have been hard for others to see the potential that Tokala found in the buildings.

“It’s an amazing transition for the city,” he said. “It’s really a gem the city should be proud of.”

Who is Sudha Tokala?