New Hotel in Downtown Topeka Makes use of Historic Buildings

Unlike others that have torn down older and even historic buildings to make room for new developments. The people behind the new hotel; recently announced, they would renovate four historic buildings to open a new 79 room hotel.
On their Twitter account, they describe themselves as,

A 79-room boutique hotel and restaurant concept with 10,000+ sq ft of event space that will occupy four historic buildings in downtown Topeka, KS.

According to WIBW, a developer unveiled plans for perhaps the biggest addition yet, going five stories up.

Plans to transform four historic buildings on South Kansas Avenue into a boutique hotel and restaurant are underway. Cody Foster, a co-founder of Topeka's Advisor's Excel, is expanding his view from the financial world to downtown Topeka.

Foster announced his intentions for the Cyrus Hotel and Holiday Public House. The new venue featuring 10,000 sq. ft. of event and meeting space is named after the founder of Topeka, Cyrus K. Holliday.l

The new hotel that will fill the historic buildings at 912, 916, 918, and 920 Kansas Avenue, will also include a five story tower that will be constructed. According to the Topeka Capital Journal, 

For Foster, his work to renovate the historic buildings in the 900 block of S. Kansas Avenue is a project that builds on his belief in the capital city and what it can become. He gets a little frustrated with people — some who live here — who don’t see what it already is.
“Nothing drives me crazier than when people say something like, ‘Why have you stayed in Topeka?’ ” he said. “Can we just stop asking that question? Why don’t you just rephrase it and say, ‘Tell us all the great things about Topeka.’ It’s almost like saying, ‘My God, I can’t believe you stay here.’ ”
His vision of a “great, vibrant destination spot downtown” fits in with his positive feelings about Topeka, and, of course, with being a businessman here. A cool, hip destination spot at the city’s core will make it easier to recruit people to work for Advisors Excel, which currently has 350 employees.

Most all the media reports indicated Foster quoted part of  a Holiday quote, in which the founder of Topeka said,

 "I am now thirty miles above Lawrence on the Kansas River assisting in starting a new town. We are just about in the central portion of the "settled" Territory and with perhaps the best landing and the most eligible site for a city in the entire country. ... So I think it must be, and in a few years when civilization by its magic influence shall have transformed this glorious country from what it is now to the brilliant destiny awaiting it, the Sun in all his course will visit no land more truly lovely and desirable than this. Here, Mary, with God's kind permission, we will make our home; and I have every reason to believe a home it will truly be." - Cyrus K Holliday

Foster expects the hotel to open in the fall of 2017.