Over the last decade, Wichita has seen people migrating downtown to the city’s core.
And businesses are doing the same. Cargill moved into its new $60 million headquarters in 2018. IMA left Rock Road for downtown in 2020.
And now KeyCentrix has found a home at Douglas and Emporia, right across the street from IMA. The tech company held an open house last week to formally celebrate its move last November.
“When they looked at this property … the location was something … that was right in the sweet spot of downtown Douglas, where a lots going on,” said Jeff Lucas, vice president of operations for Keycentrix. “There's a lot of neat development around here. And it just felt like … this was the prime place to be.”
Stephanie Wise is a real estate broker with Street Commercial. She said new development projects downtown — like the Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, WSU Tech’s NICHE and now Keycentrix — have sort of a domino effect, with one leading to another and then another.
“I think people like the vibrancy that we have downtown,” said Wise, who was involved in the Keycentrix deal.
“Does KeyCentrix have to work downtown to do what they do? No. But they listened to their employees. And I think that that's huge to hear that people want to be downtown. They want to work downtown and many of them want to live downtown.”
Lucas said Keycentrix, which develops pharmacy software, hopes the new location will help recruit talent — in particular, younger talent — to the company.
“There are a lot of perks to being in this area,” Lucas said. “You've got parks, there's a lot of neat places to eat. Especially now that the weather's getting nice, we're starting to get that feel of what all you can do.”
In addition to a desire to return downtown after 13 years in an office park near 21st and Woodlawn, Lucas said the move was also about space. It allowed its roughly 80 employees, who were split between two buildings, to consolidate into one.
And it allowed the company to create a headquarters with what he called “purpose-built space” to fit the needs of employees, some of whom work from home part of the week.
“And so when we are in the office, we want it to be an inviting office,” Lucas said. “We want it to have the cool collaborative spaces that we've mentioned, the technology that .. allows us to do our jobs and to meet and be effective in that regard.
“Being in person a lot of times gives you an opportunity to get to know people a little bit better. And, so we value that as well.”
Keycentrix, founded in 1974, has about 10,000 square feet over three floors. The building also houses its parent company, Cochener Garvey Capital Partners, and Netability, another tech company. And there’s still room on the ground floor available for use as retail space.
The building, vacant since 2018, housed the former Legacy Antique Mall. Before that, it was used as a clothing store and a Sears and Roebuck distribution center.
Keycentrix kept a lot of the old touches from the building, which dates to 1916 and is listed on the historic register. Large windows, including some that overlook Douglas, bathe the space in natural light. There are tin ceilings and sliding industrial doors. The wood floors are a mosaic of the darker, original floors with lighter patches of new replacement lumber.
Cameron Shove, the company’s senior director of IT and security, helped design and install much of the new technology in the building.
“I mean, it's beautiful,” he said of the space. “And it's got a lot of unique qualities that kind of weave in the historical kind of legacy piece of it to a lot of the high tech stuff that we are trying to do as a technology company.
“So, that's a kind of a neat marriage of those two aspects.”
The company declined to reveal the total cost of the renovation.
While Keycentrix is the latest downtown project, Wise, the real estate broker, said it won’t be the last. Especially with the joint biomedical campus Wichita State University and the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita have announced for the area.
“The whole vibe downtown is very positive … and we're only at the start,” Wise said. “I mean, with Keycentrix moving downtown, IMA moving downtown. Those are two really big, just fun additions.
“Now with this biomed campus coming. Wow, we're going to see a lot.”
