As far as New Year’s resolutions go, this one is pretty lame, but I’m going to try to be more consistent in posting weekly Douglas County land transfers. (Yes, it was kind of awkward shouting that resolution as I sprayed Champagne at the crack of midnight while at my neighbor’s New Year’s Eve party.)

Before we get going, though, a disclaimer: Unless otherwise noted, most of this information is just me relaying information from various public documents from the Douglas County Courthouse and the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office. In an effort to be timely, it is not always possible to contact everyone involved. It is not always easy to ascertain what is going on with a property just by looking at the documents, so I would read these listings as a first draft of activity in the local real estate market. On particularly interesting cases, I’ll try to follow up and report back in the coming days.

So, here we go. This week did produce several interesting sales/transfers of note:

• It looks like a California-based company has made a major purchase of several apartment properties owned by companies led by Lawrence businessman Tim Stultz.

The most recent land transfers show that North Creek Investors LLC purchased apartment properties at 4100 W. 24th Place, 1501 George Williams Way, and several addresses in the 400 block of Eisenhower Drive and the 5200 block of Eisenhower Lane, which is in the developing area just north and west of Congressional and Overland drives.

The 1501 George Williams Way property is listed on the Web as the leasing office for the Ironwood Court apartments, while the 4100 W. 24th Place property is listed as the Remington Square Apartments.

As for North Creek Investors LLC, documents from the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office list it as being a multifamily management company based in Walnut Creek, Calif., and managed by businessman Mark D. Hall.
I have a call into Tim Stultz, who has been one of the larger apartment developers in the city, to see if he will continue to play a role in the properties.

• It looks like there may be some activity at an old apartment building recently condemned by the city. In October, the city condemned a 24-unit apartment building at 1821 W. 26th St.

According to the land transfers, a new ownership group has purchased that building plus an adjacent apartment building at 1902 W. 26th St. The new group is called BlueJay Apartments Inc. According to documents from the secretary of state, Lawrence businessmen Timothy J. Allen, James H. Bruce and Rex Tedrow are the partners in the group. Previously, the properties were owned by a group led by Tedrow.

• It appears the vacant lot next to the Eldridge Hotel has changed hands. For years that lot has been owned by a group led by Lawrence investor Dale Miller. But according to the land transfers, the property at 705 and 707 Massachusetts Street — which on Google Maps appears to be the vacant lot just south of the hotel — has been transferred to a group led by Lawrence businessman Thomas Fritzel, who also leads the group that owns The Eldridge Hotel.

If you remember back in 2010, the hotel formally proposed an expansion of the Eldridge into the vacant lot. It called for a four-story building, 16 new hotel rooms, a restaurant and banquet space with a retractable roof and other features. But then the project never did materialize. Whether this is a sign that a project may get restarted on the property, I do not know.

• The shopping center that houses Hy-Vee, Applebee’s and others at Sixth and Monterey Way showed up in the most recent land transfers. Monterey Partners LLC — which is owned by a group of Kansas City, Mo. trusts, led by the trust of metro area real estate leader Robert Johnson — has transferred the property to a new entity called Lawrence Monterey Investors LLC. That entity is so new that the Secretary of State’s Office only lists Scott Slabotsky, the managing director of the large metro accounting firm CBIZ Kansas City, as the organizer of the company. So, it is hard to know whether there actually has been a true change in ownership out there or whether this is just a corporate accounting thing. I’ll try to find out more in the coming days.

Click here to see a full list of the Douglas County land transfers for the week ending Dec. 31.