Bricktown’s Mercantile building may bring additional hotel to area
OKC Business
By Pamela Grady - 7/22/2008

The Mercantile building, located at 100 and 108 E Main in Bricktown, has sold three times during the past 10 years and now the building is again on the listing block.

Gary Berlin with West Indies Trading Co. LLC purchased the properties in May 2007 for $4.2 million. In July 2007, 100 E Main LLC purchased the properties for $2.7 million. Before that, Mercantile Partners LLC purchased the properties in April 1999 for $1.55 million.

The property consists of a five-story industrial loft building totaling 55,096 square feet with tenants including CityWalk and Third Degree Advertising as well as other smaller tenants and a one-story 10,350 square-foot storage warehouse facility which now houses Uncommon Grounds. Both buildings were built in 1919.

Berlin says he has had difficulty finding tenants for the property’s upper floors which was causing a negative cash flow. Berlin says several people in the hospitality industry have recently shown interest in the building although he stressed “ no contracts have been signed.”

“We’ve had several people interested in the building,” Berlin said. “As far as having a solid offer, we don’t have one. We’ve priced and showed it and the two people who have seen it are big in the hotel business in Oklahoma City. They were really concerned about how many rooms they could get on a floor and if Bricktown Urban Design would be willing to let them put windows on the west street side of the building which has no windows and things like that. Right now we’re just talking, but it’s been a couple of weeks.”

Berlin said a prospect he spoke to said their plans would be to keep all of the building’s tenants at the site. The only tenant which might be affected if the building sold would be Uncommon Grounds, a local coffee shop.

“It’s just that they might need the area that the coffee shop is in to have their registration desk there,” Berlin said. “And they would have to make the service elevator into a passenger elevator for guests. But this is all just pie in the sky right now.”