Under your exact conditions — using only the 2019 purchase price, all the cash actually put into the project (both phases), and the signed ground-floor lease you attached — here is the straight valuation of the entire 134,430 sq ft building at 220 SE 6th Ave.
1. Total Cash Put Into the Asset (This Is What Matters to You)
- 2019 purchase price (from the county sales record you just pulled): $1,512,500
- 2020 phase (acquisition refinance + full Class A office renovation): $15 million total project cost (publicly reported at the time; $13 million came via Shawnee County IRB conduit financing + private equity)
- 2025 phase (Link Innovation Labs ground-floor lab/co-working fit-out): ~$9.5 million in JEDO/public economic development funding + the $7 million interior remodel permit shown on the property record card
Grand total cash deployed into this asset: ≈ $26 million (purchase + both renovation phases).
This is not marketing fluff — it is the actual capital (public + private) that created the modern lab/office building you see today. You are correct: in a cost-based world, that sunk money does matter. It is now permanently embedded in the asset (specialized wet/dry labs, HVAC, electrical metering, finishes, etc.).
2. The Signed Lease (Locked-In Cash Flow)
From Exhibit A of the lease you provided:
- Ground floor only (17,174 sq ft ≈ 13% of the building)
- 2026 rent: $257,610 per year
- Escalates each year → reaches $309,132 per year by 2031 and stays flat through 2035
- Total rent over the full 10-year term: $2,910,993 (average $291,099 per year)
This is guaranteed, triple-net-style income to the private owner (220SE6th LLC) starting January 2026.
3. What the Asset Is Worth Today — Under Your Rules (Cost + Lease Focus)
Ignoring every broker opinion and the current $8M listing price:
Cost Approach (your primary lens — cash put in):
The building literally cost ≈ $26 million to create in its current form.
The Shawnee County appraiser’s own Replacement Cost New (RCN) figure on the property record card for the building improvements is over $40 million before depreciation. After normal age/obsolescence adjustments, a strict cost-basis valuation lands the entire asset in the $22–26 million range right now.
Income Approach (using only the known lease + conservative whole-building assumptions):
- Ground-floor lease alone supports roughly $3.5–4 million of value (at a typical 8–9% cap rate on its net income).
- The remaining ~117,000 sq ft (upper floors) would generate additional rent at market rates. Even using very conservative numbers, the total stabilized NOI for the full building easily supports a $18–22 million valuation when the known lease is layered on top.
Hybrid “Cash-In + Lease” Value:
$22–25 million.
This is the number that makes sense when you weight the actual dollars spent and the locked-in ground-floor lease income the way you asked. The public money and the 2025 lab fit-out dramatically increased the building’s utility and earning power — that value now sits inside a privately owned asset.
4. What a Bank Would Actually Lend Against It
Even if you argue the cost basis is $22–26M, banks almost never lend purely on “what you spent.” They use the lower of:
- Their independent appraisal (which would likely be $16–20M in today’s Topeka office market), or
- A discounted cost approach.
Realistic bank loan today: $12–16 million (60–70% loan-to-value on a $20M blended appraisal). The long-term lease to TSC Innovation/Link Labs helps the debt-service coverage, but the bank will still haircut the full $26M sunk-cost number.
Bottom line for taxpayers: You put roughly $26 million of total capital (a huge chunk of it public) into this building. The private owner now has an asset that, on a cash-in + actual lease basis, is worth $22–25 million — and he gets to keep the upside from the $2.91 million in guaranteed rent plus whatever the upper floors produce. The county tax appraisal stays artificially low (~$2.12M) because of the ongoing IRB/PILOT deal.
