Riley Tower stands on the corner of Wshington and 4th Street in Marion. Staff photo by Samantha Saad
Riley Tower stands on the corner of Wshington and 4th Street in Marion. Staff photo by Samantha Saad
• •
The Marion National Bank, built in 1917, was once a hub for an abundance of professional services and is considered Marion’s first skyscraper. After sitting vacant for several years, the building, now called Ridley Tower, was revitalized by Halstead Development, winning the firm this year’s Indiana Landmarks’ Renaissance Award.

“The Renaissance Award recognizes projects that we might call heroic or people [who] go to great lengths to save a place that others may have given up on,” Marsh Davis, president of Indiana Landmarks, said. “Sometimes people think that certain properties are just too far gone. When they are restored, as the Ridley tower was, it’s worthy of recognition.”

For a project to qualify for the award, it must have some architectural and historical significance. Projects like Ridley Tower take commitment, a strong vision and substantial finances in order to be accomplished, Davis said.

“It took some vision to see the potential in this building,” Davis said. “The fact that it was in poor condition and posed some pretty significant restoration challenges made it a clear contender for this award.”

Michael Halstead, president of Halstead Development & Halstead Architects, said they bought the building in August 2018. The $9 million project was completed in May 2023 after Halstead Architects moved into the second floor, he said.

The previous owner of the property owned it for five years and had taken little care of it. The heat had been kept off, causing the pipes to burst and the utility companies to shut off the power, Halstead said.

“It’s a beautiful architectural piece and had been abandoned for so long,” Halstead said. “The price to buy it was right, and I just kind of got tired of looking at it slowly rot. There could be something special. I was looking for a challenge, and that was it.”

The building’s first floor hosted a bank until 2016, however, its upper floors had remained vacant for at least a decade, Davis said.

In 2017, Indiana Landmarks put the Marion National Bank on its 10 Most Endangered list.

Some issues with the building had included water leaking from the upper floors as well as the roof, mold issues and thieves breaking into the abandoned building to steal various items such as the copper plumbing, Davis said.

It took three months to remove the demolition and waste out of the building during the revitalization process. By the time they finished, they had filled 60 30-yard dumpsters. Other than the trash and old furniture they had discarded, there had been three to four layers of flooring and ceiling removed from different areas of the building as well, Halstead said.

Halstead kept the historic facade intact, also restoring the original grand lobby and replacing missing pieces of the exterior columns and terra cotta facade. They also uncovered and restored the original marble, which had been painted over.

One of the primary goals Halstead had for Ridley Tower was for it to be a mixed-use property to maximize its occupancy. Personal and retail businesses occupy the first floor with apartments on the upper levels, Halstead said.

Currently, OBI’s Barbeque, Ashley’s Ice Cream & Coffee, F.C. Tucker Realty Center, Allstate: Kyle Taylor and Halstead Architects are some of the businesses operating out of Ridley Tower.

Housing density is key to growing a successful area, Halstead said.

Halstead knew he wanted the upper floors to be market rate apartments because of current housing options in Marion.

“It just seemed like it was a huge need,” Halstead said. “I wanted to make sure that they were market rate – that they were affordable – [so] that anyone of mixed income could live there. So they’re not only for high income people, they’re also reasonable in terms of rent for modest income. So because of that, we have a huge variety of tenants in the apartments.”

Halstead and his wife self-funded the rehabilitation project for a certain amount of time. Halstead said he went to New York for a bridge loan as well as to Fort Wayne for the final mortgage.

Getting the bank’s support had been one of the biggest struggles, he said.

“I just felt like the building was too beautiful and too important to save,” Halstead said. “As an architect, it’s just important to be able to save those kinds of buildings, and so we just kept putting more money in until we got to a point where we could prove the banks wrong – that it was a great project and that it would fill up and that it would lease up.”

Part of the funding for the project also came from historic rehabilitation tax credits (HTC) and Indiana Economic Development Corporation redevelopment tax credits (RTC). Without them, the project could not have happened, Halstead said.

Davis said Ridley Tower generated approximately $1.7 million in historic tax credits.

“This project speaks to the importance of historic preservation and tax credits,” Davis said. “It’s an incentive that’s available at the federal level for the renovation of historic buildings.”

Halstead named Ridley Tower after his granddaughter who had been born two weeks before he purchased the original building in 2018.

While their firm has earned awards in the past, the Renaissance Award is the biggest preservation award they have won, he said.

At one point in history, the bank had held as many as 600 people daily, all involved in a variety of enterprises in the Marion National Bank, Bill Munn, Grant County historian, said.

“It was sort of like the one stop shopping [center] for professional services in Marion,” he said.

That was true until the early 70s, he said. After that, only the banking business continued in the building.

Eventually, the decline in occupancy had made it difficult for the building to pay off. Many businesses had started branching into their own offices and individual buildings. The only revenue for the Marion National Bank had been the bank itself, Munn said.

The Grant County Courthouse is also a significant building in downtown Marion, making the courthouse and old Marion National Bank key components to the community’s identity, Munn said.

“The bank building was sort of like the cornerstone,” he said. “So when it started to decline, things further went downhill.”

Downtown Marion had already begun to decline with fewer people coming to the area. As vacancies just started to generate more vacancies, it made it more difficult for people to commit to the downtown spaces when they couldn’t see a positive future in it, Munn said.

Now, with the Ridley Tower’s revitalization, opportunities are growing again.

“My tribute to Halstead is not only did he do great things, but he continues to be involved in doing good things for the community,” Munn said. “He puts his money into it. He takes the risk.”

“I think you can see that when we finished this building and made the investment, that other people invested in downtown Marion,” Halstead said. “We see other buildings are being fixed up…People are starting to reinforce downtown Marion, and I think it just has a ripple effect. It takes one big project like this to get it started.”
Copyright © 2024 Chronicle-Tribune