Breathing life into downtown Hutchinson, Kan. (pop. 40,000), feels like a calling for banker Laura Meyer Dick. Why else would she embark on a redevelopment project that aims to create 36 sparklingly new apartments out of a century-old, five-story blighted hotel building that was missing 90 percent of its windows and had been taken over by pigeons?
“We need housing,” Meyer Dick said. “Housing will help bring young people back, and that will help with economic development, and recruiting companies to come and build in Hutchinson.”
That’s the banker’s reasoning. The daughter’s reasoning is more complex: Adding housing to downtown matters to the fourth-generation banker who serves as vice president of First Kansas Bancshares, the parent of First National Bank of Hutchinson, because supporting downtown mattered to her late father, Nation Meyer.
“Dad loved downtown and he worked on [supporting] downtown for years,” Meyer Dick said. In the late 1970s, when the rise of suburban malls were diverting retail dollars away from Main Street businesses, Nation Meyer sought to buy two entire city blocks to convince civic leaders to build its mall downtown. Ultimately, that dream for downtown went unfulfilled, Meyer Dick said. “Our commercial centers are fragmented as a result.”
Nation Meyer was integral to the success of FNB-Hutchinson for 70 of his 98 years. When he passed away in 2020, the bank’s CEO, Troy Hutton, authorized a donation to the Hutchinson Community Foundation in Nation Meyer’s honor. “He told me, ‘Figure out what your dad would like or how he would want to be remembered,’” Meyer Dick recounted. It made sense for the “what” to somehow focus on downtown.
Yet the road from remembrance to legacy wasn’t as straight as the path through the town’s central business district. Meyer Dick started brainstorming with folks at the Community Foundation and the Chamber of Commerce. When she suggested the city create a master plan as had been done in Salina, Kan., “they kind of laughed at me,” she said. The bank’s memorial hadn’t been large enough for a wholesale reimagining of Hutchinson.
Undeterred, Meyer Dick did her research and sought bids for expertise in downtown master planning. With a bid just north of $200,000 in hand, Meyer Dick committed to cover half herself through fundraising if city leaders would pledge the rest. They agreed, and their collective work created the Nation Meyer Memorial Fund.
It was during fundraising outreach when Meyer Dick was nudged to consider redeveloping the decrepit Landmark Hotel, which marred the center of town. She sent her husband, Michael, to look at the building first. He reported back with “there’s no way… ”
“I went in and I saw a vision,” Meyer Dick said. “I saw what it used to look like.” (The building can be seen in the opening and closing scenes of the 1952 film, “Wait ’Till the Sun Shines, Nellie.”)
Revitalized downtowns with rentals built into historic buildings appeals to a younger demographic; these are the same people Meyer Dick thinks Hutchinson needs as workers, and the same age-group as her three daughters.
“I did some research, got the Chamber involved, and they introduced me to an architect who has quite a bit of experience in state and federal historic tax credits and grants,” Meyer Dick said. She also hired a developer to help her navigate the myriad nuances of historic preservation, including the tax implications to her personally. Meyer Dick paid $150,000 for the building that has a renovation price tag of $14 million. In addition to apartments, the building will offer street level retail and restaurant space and a basement level speakeasy.
“I’m a banker by trade, so I did the spreadsheet and underwrote it like a banker would and made sure it was bankable,” Meyer Dick said. “There are still a lot of risks in renovating this. I tell people I have two goals. One is to get it finished and for it to be a great community asset. The other is to not lose my retirement.”
Reconstruction, which is slated for completion in late 2026, hasn’t yet begun. “It’s a beautiful building,” Meyer Dick said. “Even though it’s 100 years old, it is sturdy.”
It also has a revised name: The Meyer Landmark.
“It’s not a big for-profit project, but it really will make a difference in downtown,” she said. “And yes, I’m doing this for my dad.
“He put ‘community’ right up there with our family,” Meyer Dick said of her late father. “He said, ‘The community has given our family a lot over four generations and we need to make sure we give back to the community.’ I remember him saying that a lot. And he was very driven to pull things together and connect people to make projects work.”
Like father, like daughter.