Indianapolis' historic downtown White Castle building sells

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The visually unavoidable but itty-bitty historic White Castle building at the corner of Fort Wayne Avenue and Delaware Street finally sold after two years on the market - for just $70,000.

Jason Hartman bought the Indianapolis property in mid-February from Indiana Landmarks, which got an even better deal on the 598-square-foot building: In 2017, the organization bought it from the Indiana National Guard for $1 to save it from demolition.

"I just had kind of always noticed that building," he said. "I noticed it obviously looked like a White Castle, but wasn't for sure that it was a White Castle."

He just wanted to check it out, so he called his Realtor and set up a showing.

"I didn't have an intention of purchasing it, I just wanted to see it," he said. "When I got there, I just saw a lot of potential in it."

Hartman plans to lease it to a business, maybe a small architecture firm or other commercial tenant. Because of White Castle's own restrictions on the building, a kitchen isn't permitted on the property, so it can't be a restaurant.

There's space for "three good-sized offices," Hartman said.

"I'm going to get the interior to a good, stable blank space, so if a commercial tenant comes in they'll have a nice, blank space to work with," he said.

It's been vacant for nearly 15 years, and Hartman's got a lot of work to do on the 92-year-old building before he can put it up for rent.

"Part of the agreement from purchasing it from Indiana Landmarks is that the purchaser has to restore the exterior brick," he said. "You can't just re-cover it, you have to actually rebuild it. So it's a pretty big undertaking."

The brick, he said, is going to have to be specially made from mason in Texas.

Hartman, who works remotely in Indianapolis for a software company based in Seattle, has made a side gig of buying rentals and restoring them to lease, but he's "not a flipper."

"I like to turn old properties to properties that contribute," he said.

Hartman says he owns rentals in Woodruff Place, Emerson Heights and Broad Ripple, but this is his first foray into commercial real estate.

"This is a little bit of a new game for me," he said. "My hope and my intention is to get it stable and find a long term commercial tenant for it."

He said he hopes not to put more than $60,000 into the building, and aims for July to begin shopping for the perfect tenant.

"It's a small space, and that is one of the reasons I took it on," he said. "There's a lot to go into it, but it's not super complex."

The 92-year-old building was even smaller when it was constructed in 1927. Back then, according to IndyStar archives, it only had five stools. When it expanded a few years later, the businesses added four more stools.

It's also the city's oldest existing White Castle building, and could be the third-oldest in the country, Indiana Landmarks said.

It hasn't been a White Castle, though, since 1979. A real estate broker bought it and ran his business out of it before he sold it to the Indiana National Guard, which used it for a recruitment office until 2005.

Hartman's planning for the area to get hotter, as new developments and businesses continue to be built around the little White Castle.

"I hope that it was smart," he said. "I have a lot of hope for the area."

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Source: The Indianapolis Star

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Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com