| City/Town: • Tulsa |
| Location Class: • Commercial |
| Built: • 1983 | Abandoned: • 2017 |
| Status: • Under Renovation |
| Photojournalist: • David Linde |
Driving down I-44 one’s eye can be drawn to a large tower building sporting boarded-up windows. For years I wondered what this lone structure was and why it was vacant. This was Remington Tower. But it wasn’t always called this.
Skyline Tower
Originally announced as the Skyline Tower, calls for an investment opportunity of a lifetime began showing up in papers in 1981. This was a joint business venture between Home Life Insurance Co. and Skyline Tower Inc. Designed with mirrored glass, polished bricks, private balconies and 18-19 floors of luxury for the top executives and entrepreneurs, this was the place to rent in the ’80s. Construction officially began in 1982 with an anticipated completion date of summer 1983.
The first of numerous ownership transitions happened just three years after its inception for a whopping $6 million. Three Tulsa businessmen bought the building that was at the time called Skyline Tower. Management contracts for the property went to Tooman Collins Associates Inc. Misfortuned by an oil bust just two years later the building was foreclosed on after defaulting on the $8.35 million mortgage. Skyline Tower was then opened up to the market as rentable office space.
The building was again sold in 1991 to Mike Case of Case & Associates and several other Tulsa investors. A $1 million renovation was set to take place and the tower would be renamed to Remington Tower. The renovations would include enlarging the lobby, reconstructing the main entrance, landscaping and parking garage repairs. Some of the tenants at the time included Health Concepts IV who would occupy the 17th floor and two-story penthouse and the anchor of the building MicroAge Computer.
The building went on the market again in March 2003 when owner Transcontinental Remington Inc., decided to sell the office condominium complex floor by floor. This was made possible because each level had a separate legal description and metered electrical system. But purchasing even just a singular floor of the 18-story high rise would cost you somewhere in the range of $340-470,000.
A sale was made public that December for $3.36 million to Swadener Investment Properties. New owner Swadener, said that he planned to move his business into the Remington Tower and lease the remainder of the floors.
This wasn’t the end of the long list of sales, again in 2013 the building sold for $3.75 million to John Rupe Jr., Mark Helmer and Mark Roberts with the leasing and management contract given to NAI Petrous.
2017 Tulsa Tornado
An EF2 tornado in 2017 ripped through midtown Tulsa damaging numerous buildings badly. The Remington Tower was one of them that took the brunt of the winds. The City of Tulsa temporarily lifted access restrictions to the beaten building a few weeks after the August 6th nightmare so that tenants could go in to retrieve some of their personal items. Access had been blocked while engineers assessed if the tower was at risk of collapsing, a process that took weeks.
Ultimately the tower remained closed and sat abandoned for roughly six years with the owners giving press releases about once a year since then about the future of the building. Those press releases always said relatively the same thing, the future was unknown.
Possible Restoration
But after years of uncertainty, some good news finally came for the Tower in 2020 with new owners TAG Multifamily purchasing the building in March. The plan, at least back then, was to turn the space into luxury apartments but with Covid in full swing around the time of phase one, they didn’t make it very far.
Details of their plans included replacing the broken-out windows and bricks that had been damaged from the tornado. Another building would be added to the back of the Tower to allow for amenities. Construction still slowly pushed on into the summer of 2021 with a proposed completion date of 2022. But the months came and went and now being well into 2023 and not much other work publicized it’s not sure what if anything will come of the building.
Gallery Below of Remington Tower
https://www.newspapers.com/image/891258540/?terms=%22skyline%20tower%22&match=1&clipping_id=123609311
https://www.newspapers.com/image/891211580/?terms=%22skyline%20tower%22&match=1&clipping_id=123609331
https://www.newspapers.com/image/891520717/?terms=%22skyline%20tower%22&match=1&clipping_id=123609351
https://www.newspapers.com/image/891156789/?terms=%22skyline%20tower%22&match=1&clipping_id=123609360
https://www.newspapers.com/image/891163607/?terms=%22skyline%20tower%22&match=1&clipping_id=123609381
https://www.newspapers.com/image/891215212/?terms=%22skyline%20tower%22&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/892832016/?terms=skyline%20tower&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/910761116/?terms=%22remington%20tower%22&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/909669002/?terms=remington%20tower
https://www.newspapers.com/image/909693805/?terms=remington%20tower&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/911140147/?match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/911165251/?terms=remington%20tower&match=1
https://ktul.com/news/local/new-look-at-construction-underway-inside-remington-tower-apartments
https://www.newspapers.com/image/934855517/?terms=remington%20tower&match=1
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