The Pivot Project, a development team with extensive experience with historic buildings, is looking to open the first hotel along Automobile Alley through renovation of the Magnolia Petroleum building.

The five-story office building at 722 N Broadway, built in 1919, was sold by longtime owner Chris Salyer on April 30 for $4.575 million. It is on the same block where Pivot Project is in the midst of a $30.1 million redevelopment of an early 1900s Chevrolet dealership that was last home to Stowe’s Office Furniture.

“We really like the building and Chris Salyer has been a great steward of it for quite a while,” Jonathan Dodson, CEO of Pivot Project, said. “Getting to take that building makes a lot of sense, especially because of its adjacency to Medley Marketplace, which is going to have pickleball courts, food and beverage and apartments. We think the two buildings can play off of each other.”

Dodson said the group is looking at converting the Magnolia Building into a boutique hotel, though a final plan won’t be decided until later this year. He said Medley Marketplace is about 60% completed with an opening set for November.

The Magnolia Building was originally built as a regional office for Magnolia Petroleum (later known as Mobil Oil) and featured a gas station on the first floor that in more recent years was used as a bank drive-through.

Salyer purchased the Magnolia Building and other properties along Broadway during the 1980s oil bust when a city councilmember declared “downtown is dead and we helped kill it.” Salyer said he start buying properties along what is now Automobile Alley after proving to friends that downtown was indeed “dead.”

“I just had a wonderful meal at the Petroleum Club on a Saturday night,” Salyer said. “We were headed home. My friends were asking if I fell. They were telling me to get up. But I just wanted to note to myself that it was 9’o’clock on a Saturday night in downtown Oklahoma City and I could lie down in the street and not get run over. There was something wrong with this picture.”

Salyer concluded, much to the disbelief of his friends, that it was an ideal time to buy and renovate downtown properties after decades of disinvestment and loss of residents, businesses and retail to the suburbs.

Four decades later, Automobile Alley is home to an eclectic mix of housing, offices, restaurants and retail. Salyer himself lives in a converted loft near the Magnolia Building.

“My buddies, most of whom are dead, saw it was a time to leave, not as a time to invest,” Salyer said. “It took time and effort and resources and mayors.”

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