The 1920 building at the southeast corner of English and Broadway — once home to “one of the handsomest automobile dealers in the southwest,” according to a 1991 Eagle story — is about to get new life.

Arena South Management, which has five other buildings in that area of downtown, is converting the four-story building into apartments called the Arnold.

“What I really love about this building is its got high ceilings, and it’s got massive windows,” said Bruce Rowley, who is co-managing partners in Arena South with Alan Banta.

Rowley said there is a lot of light, which will contribute to “very open, modern-feeling apartments.”

The Broadway Autopark apartments are across from where the new units will open in fall 2025.

Driving the need for more housing is another neighbor: the new Wichita Biomedical Campus that Wichita State University and the University of Kansas Medical Center are building nearby between Topeka and Broadway on the east and west and William and English on the north and south.

“There’s not a lot of inventory downtown,” Rowley said.

He said there’s a lot of housing coming, but not for a few years.

“We certainly see the demand for housing downtown.”

The apartments are named for former car dealer Morris Arnold and his Arnold Motors Co.

There will be 42 apartments on the second, third and fourth floors. Two thirds of those will be one-bedroom apartments. The rest will be studio apartments.

“They will be market rates,” Rowley said.

He guesses that means they’ll be between $1,000 and $1,300.

There also will be some common area on the rooftop where residents can gather.

Rowley said there will be 5,000 square feet of retail on the first floor, which could be one business or three or four smaller retailers.

“That’s going to continue to be really important for the vibrancy of downtown.”

SPT Architecture is the architect, and Key Construction is the general contractor.

George Siedhoff, who worked on many downtown buildings, was the original contractor on this 28,000-square-foot building, which was built for $75,000.

Rowley said renovation of the space will cost close to $5 million.

“We continue to invest in downtown Wichita, and this building was a great size for us,” he said. “We’ve kind of moved up bigger and bigger with the projects we’ve taken on.”

Once the new apartments are done, Rowley said, his group will have redeveloped almost 100,000 square feet of either under-performing or empty properties downtown.

That includes the FireWorx building at 500 S. Topeka, a property at 420 S. Emporia, another at 535 S. Emporia, a building at 400 S. Commerce and the ArenaPointe building at 400 S. Emporia.

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Rowley got a kick out of learning more about Arnold and his company.

According to a 1909 Eagle article that ran a drawing of Arnold, he not only “had a reputation as one of Wichita’s pioneering auto dealers,” but he was a looker, too.

“Look at the above profile of M.L. Arnold, and see if you don’t think he is real cute,” the article said. “He was not posing merely for picturesque effect, nor yet for grotesque effect, as he is naturally handsome, urbane, blase, and suave, and the artist caught him unexpectedly while he was pensively ruminating as to who next to lariat and convince an automobile is the very thing he needs most.”

M.L. Arnold in cartoon 26 Nov 1909, Fri The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kansas) Newspapers.com