Cynthia Blanchard has found it easier to become a commercial real estate investor than to get out of the business.
The former singer-songwriter who once performed backup vocals with country music stars like Reba McEntire said she paid $250 last year to buy Price Tower, one of only two office buildings ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. But after failing to redevelop the 19-story skyscraper in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, she's now having trouble auctioning it off and moving on.
Days before an auction for Price Tower was scheduled to begin Oct. 7 with a starting price of $600,000, the event was postponed until Nov. 18-20 on Ten-X, an online platform owned by CoStar Group.
The move comes after a lawsuit was filed last week by a rejected buyer against Blanchard's ownership group in an Oklahoma district court. The lawsuit filed by the McFarlin Building LLC, a development company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, led by John Snyder, is asking the court to force Blanchard's group to "convey" Price Tower to them for $1.4 million because of a contract both parties signed in May.
Blanchard said in a statement sent to CoStar News before the lawsuit was filed that her ownership group terminated the agreement in writing "just hours before the scheduled closing" because of "extensive and unreasonable last-minute demands."
Blanchard's attorney, John Farley III at Helton Law Firm, said in a statement that his client denies the lawsuit's claim that a valid contract exists for Price Tower. Snyder, known for restoring the Mayo Hotel and Aloft Hotel in Tulsa, and his team were able and willing to close on all parts of the contract, a company spokesperson told CoStar News. The allegations of any last-minute demands are false, the spokesperson said.
Stepping into real estate
The lawsuit is just the latest hurdle Blanchard has faced since becoming the owner of the iconic Price Tower that Wright originally conceived for a New York City neighborhood but ended up being built on the Oklahoma prairie. In fact, she never envisioned becoming a commercial real estate investor at all. But after pandemic lockdowns in 2020 on the West Coast, Blanchard and her husband decided to trade in their Santa Monica, California, address for her hometown of Bartlesville, a city with fewer than 40,000 residents about 47 miles north of Tulsa.
Not long after arriving in Bartlesville, an entity tied to Blanchard's husband bought the city's historic former courthouse that had been converted into an office building and sat on the market for a long time. The property held sentimental value for Blanchard since both her parents and grandparents got their marriage certificates at the courthouse, she told CoStar News. It was also cash-flow positive.
Encouraged by her first brush with ownership of commercial real estate in Bartlesville, Blanchard started looking into buying Price Tower with grand plans of renovating it to help transform Bartlesville into what she calls “Silicon Ranch,” catering to young professionals in the tech industry as an extension of the emerging tech hub in Tulsa.
But the project didn't work out as planned, leading her to put the financially struggling building up for auction to try to recoup costs while dealing with a separate dispute with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
"I didn't intend to step into the real estate world, but I ended up doing it," Blanchard said.
Like the historic courthouse in Bartlesville, Price Tower — a building that opened in 1956 during Bartlesville's heyday catering to the oil and gas industry — had sentimental value to Blanchard because both her mother and father had jobs with ties to the building.
The 60,335-square-foot tower had been owned by Price Tower Arts Center, a nonprofit group, since 2001 and operated as offices, a 19-room hotel called the Inn at Price Tower and Copper Bar + Restaurant. After looking at the 19-story building's balance sheet, Blanchard noticed the financial struggles the nonprofit group was dealing with as operators of the high-profile piece of commercial real estate.
"It was way upside down," Blanchard said about the tower's finances. "It became an intriguing idea that I decided to take on."
Blanchard purchased Price Tower in March 2023 with the assumption of the tower's $600,000 of debt, she said. But she added that the transaction took place before she was able to conduct her due diligence or secure adequate funding.
Since then, Blanchard said she has borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends and family in an effort to keep Price Tower operating. And the investors she thought would come through weren’t able to commit and she saw her dreams of transforming Price Tower into a beacon for the tech industry becoming harder to attain, Blanchard said.
It is unclear if her husband, Anthem Blanchard, was one of those investors. He and his company, Anthem Holdings Co., were recently accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of defrauding investors of over $5 million in two securities offerings between September 2020 and July 2022, and the charges are subject to litigation by federal prosecutors. Anthem Blanchard did not respond to an interview request from CoStar News seeking a comment about the SEC charges, but The New York Times reported he has denied all wrongdoing.
History
Price Tower opened in the 1950s after businessman Harold C. Price commissioned Wright to design a new headquarters for his pipeline company in Bartlesville. Instead of the three- or four-story building Price had in mind, Wright convinced him to build a 19-story skyscraper, a design that included residential units along with offices Wright originally conceived for a New York City neighborhood.
Once built, Wright called the tower "the tree that escaped the crowded forest" in a nod to being on the prairie and not in a pool of Manhattan skyscrapers, according to the building's website. The tower, complete with Wright-designed furniture and other artifacts, was the tallest project ever built by Wright.
Price relocated his pipeline company's headquarters to Dallas in the 1980s and sold Price Tower to Phillips Petroleum Co., which used the building mostly for storage. Phillips Petroleum later gave the building to the Price Tower Arts Center nonprofit organization that operated Price Tower until financial woes caught up with them, forcing a quick exit to Cynthia Blanchard's group in 2023.
The debt on Price Tower has grown since Cynthia Blanchard acquired it early last year, she said, but declined to share the figures. She sold some Wright-designed items from the tower earlier this year through a Dallas-based midcentury artifacts dealer for some cash to help keep the building's lights on, she said.
"We sold 10 items in late April because we were up against a wall," she said.
Terms of the arrangement were not disclosed. Cynthia Blanchard said the proceeds helped fuel operations within the tower as she sought other financing options. Price Tower's operations closed on Sept. 1 and the building is now vacant.
Some of the Price Tower artifacts and furniture designed by Wright listed for sale include a copper relief panel for $44,000, a copper table with a price tag of $78,000 and an $88,000 custom casual arm chair.
However, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, another nonprofit group, claims it has a preservation easement signed with Price Tower Arts Center protecting Price Tower and some of the Wright-designed items within it.
Cynthia Blanchard argues Price Tower Arts Center ceased operating Price Tower when it sold the structure to a for-profit ownership group, voiding the easement on Frank Lloyd Wright-designed items within the building. The conservancy alleges the easement isn't affected by a change in building ownership.
"Most of the items were literally in storage for 20 years," she said. "That chair sitting there in storage now has an opportunity to get a new life and is a steward of the story of Price Tower."
The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy's executive director, Barbara Gordon, told CoStar News that items designed by Wright for Price Tower were moved into storage to make way for The Inn at Price Tower and a restaurant within the building.
Gordon argues a building owner is not to sell items protected by the easement without the consent of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The group has filed liens against Cynthia Blanchard's ownership entities to stop the sale of additional items.
"We understand that this is a financially challenging building, but they never disclosed they were selling the easement-covered items until we saw them on a website," Gordon said.
Looking ahead
Even though Cynthia Blanchard's ownership tenure of Price Tower is likely to be elongated by the lawsuit filed last week, she told CoStar News she plans to steer clear of future real estate investments. Eventually, she said she hopes a new owner can return Price Tower to its former glory.
She first remembers seeing Price Tower as a 7-year-old because the structure's unique shape caught her eye as an iconic part of her childhood hometown. The tower has been used for everything from offices to retail shops throughout the decades, she said.
"The community cares about this iconic and historical building and we care deeply about Price Tower and want to see it through to the next owner and steward of what Price Tower is supposed to be," she said.
In some ways, she said, real estate has by far been a more extreme experience than her time in the music industry with her personally facing the criticism from hardcore preservationists and city residents. But she tries not to take it too personally.
"Part of this challenge is growing pains that have to happen and shift as Bartlesville enters its next phase of life," she said.
The story was updated Oct. 4 to include a comment from a spokesperson for John Snyder.