This report compiles every piece of information gathered so far on the two Shawnee County commercial properties. It draws directly from the official 2026 property record cards, the emails received from Steve Bauman at the Appraiser's Office, the public valuation history, actual tax payment records, and the background details on vacancy, condition, and the 2017 Board of Tax Appeals (BOTA) decision. The goal is to give you a single, readable narrative you can copy straight into a Word document without any large tables breaking the flow. All comparisons are written in plain paragraphs or simple indented lists so the formatting stays clean when pasted.
Property Overviews
The first property is the ten-story office high-rise at 823 SE Quincy Street in downtown Topeka. It is owned by KLATON REAL ESTATE LLC. The building was constructed in 1951 with major additions in 1953. It sits on 0.52 acres and contains roughly 122,000 square feet of space spread across ten floors plus a full basement. The structure has been completely vacant since 2005—more than twenty years of continuous non-use. The county record card notes that significant tenant improvements would be required before the building could be leased again. Interior remodel permits from the late 1990s are on file, but nothing recent except a 2021 permit that was never completed. The land is classified as a developed site in the downtown core neighborhood. All public utilities are in place, and the location offers major-street frontage, sidewalks, and on-street parking.
The second property is the single-story fast-food restaurant at 1725 SE 29th Street, also in Topeka. It operates as a Dairy Queen and is owned by SWICKARD MIKE & ZWIESLER JOHN. The building was constructed around 1990 and sits on approximately 0.46 acres in the southeast central neighborhood along a secondary arterial street. It contains only about 1,747 square feet of interior space and is fully occupied and operating as an active business. The site includes adequate off-street parking for sixteen vehicles. All public utilities are present, and the property shows normal commercial maintenance consistent with ongoing restaurant use. A handful of minor site-improvement components (such as signage, paving, and fencing) are listed on the record card, but no major deferred-maintenance issues are noted.
Side-by-Side Comparison in Narrative Form
Both properties are classified as commercial and industrial (Class C) and fall into the same tax unit group, which means they share the identical mill levy rate. Their total appraised values for the 2026 tax year are remarkably close—the high-rise is valued at $259,140 while the Dairy Queen is valued at $271,500, a difference of only about $12,360. Yet the way those values are allocated could not be more different. On the high-rise, land accounts for the majority of the value at $180,000 (roughly 69 percent of the total), while the massive building itself is carried at just $79,140 (only 31 percent). In contrast, the Dairy Queen's value is driven almost entirely by the building at $231,600 (85 percent of the total), with land contributing just $39,900 (15 percent).
The physical disparity is even more striking. The high-rise is approximately seventy times larger in building square footage than the Dairy Queen. It offers ten full floors of office space, a full basement, elevators, extensive plumbing and electrical systems serving multiple stories, and a downtown core location with superior visibility and access. The Dairy Queen is a modest single-story retail structure with a drive-thru and standard restaurant build-out. Condition also tells two very different stories. The high-rise has sat vacant for more than two decades and is described by the appraiser's office as needing significant tenant improvements to become leasable. The Dairy Queen, however, is actively operating with no indication of long-term vacancy or major functional obsolescence.
Location factors further highlight the imbalance. The high-rise enjoys a prime downtown position on Quincy Street with major-strip frontage, while the Dairy Queen sits on a secondary arterial in a more suburban commercial corridor. Despite the high-rise having substantially more land, better location, and vastly greater built infrastructure, the county's valuation methodology has kept its building component artificially low.
Valuation History and the 2017 BOTA Impact
The high-rise's current valuation is not the result of a recent owner protest or new appraisal work. According to Steve Bauman's email, the appraised value has remained essentially unchanged since the 2017 Board of Tax Appeals Small Claims hearing. In that hearing the county originally proposed a value of $627,400. The hearing officer reduced it to $275,000, relying heavily on the property's 2016 purchase price of exactly $275,000 and the documented challenges of the building's large size and required renovations. Because there have been no physical changes to the property and no further appeals since 2017, the county has simply carried that same methodology forward each year. The 2024 appraised value sat at $79,140 before rising modestly to the current $259,140 level for 2025 and 2026. The record card still shows the cost approach as primary, with heavy depreciation applied due to the long vacancy.
The Dairy Queen, by comparison, follows standard commercial restaurant valuation. Its building value is supported by both cost and income approaches without any long-term vacancy adjustment or special BOTA reduction. No appeals or protests have been filed on either property in recent cycles, and Steve confirmed there have been none on the high-rise since 2017.
Tax Burden and Lifetime Savings Calculation
Because both properties share the same tax unit, their tax bills are nearly identical despite the enormous differences in size and infrastructure. For the 2025 tax year the high-rise generated $9,793.82 in taxes paid, while the Dairy Queen generated $10,260.94—a gap of only $467.12 per year. On a per-square-foot basis the difference becomes extreme: the high-rise pays roughly eight cents per square foot of building area, whereas the Dairy Queen pays about $5.87 per square foot. In other words, the active fast-food restaurant is taxed at more than seventy times the rate of the vacant high-rise on a square-footage basis.
The long-term savings for the KLATON high-rise are substantial. Prior to the 2017 BOTA decision, the 2016 tax bill on the county's original higher valuation was approximately $32,011. From 2017 through 2025 (nine full years) the owner paid a total of $94,899 in taxes. Had the value never been reduced and the 2016-level taxes continued, the owner would have paid roughly $288,103 over those same nine years. The cumulative savings therefore total approximately $193,204, or an average of about $21,500 per year. The 2026 tax bill will add another roughly $9,794 at the current valuation, and these savings will continue to accumulate for as long as the carry-forward methodology remains in place.
Deferred Maintenance and Pending Repair Cost Note
The high-rise record card and Steve Bauman's description both confirm long-term vacancy and the need for significant tenant improvements. No recent major repair costs have been submitted for the high-rise, but the county has already applied heavy depreciation to reflect its condition. For the Dairy Queen, the record card shows only routine site improvements with no indication of major deferred maintenance. As you noted, we will obtain actual repair-cost estimates for any Dairy Queen items as soon as they are available and can fold those numbers into a revised version of this report. At present, however, the county treats the Dairy Queen as fully functional and in normal commercial use.
Overall Conclusion on the Disparity
In summary, the two properties have almost identical total appraised values and produce nearly the same annual tax revenue for Shawnee County. Yet the high-rise at 823 SE Quincy Street offers roughly seventy times the building square footage, a premium downtown location, far more embedded infrastructure, and a much larger land parcel—while remaining vacant for over twenty years. The 2017 BOTA reduction, anchored to the 2016 sale price and the building's condition challenges, has created a long-term valuation methodology that continues to suppress the building component. As a direct result, KLATON REAL ESTATE LLC enjoys a dramatically lower effective tax rate than the owner of the much smaller, actively operating Dairy Queen. The lifetime tax savings to date already exceed $193,000, and the per-square-foot tax burden on the high-rise is only a tiny fraction of what the Dairy Queen pays.
