The historic Gordon Building at the northeast corner of Ninth and Logan streets appears to have a bright future under new owner Dick Gordon of Noblesville Premium Properties.
The Gordon family bought the building in September 2019. It renovated the upper floor and added new lights, a new ceiling, new walls and new carpet. The second story is 6,000 square feet. The first floor is 7,500 square feet. The basement is 7,000 square feet. Spaces from 100 square feet to 5,700 square feet are available for lease.
“We are just now ready to lease it,” said Gordon, a Noblesville resident. “We’ve had people waiting to be able to go in and tour it. There’s been a number of calls. We just got it finished, and we just (recently) got some murals up.”
The murals are on the outside of the building facing Logan and Ninth streets. Artists Becky Hochhalter, Megan Jefferson, Koda Witsken and Travis Neal painted the murals to represent Noblesville.
The Gordon Building, which was formerly the KeyBank building, has a rich history. It was built as a financial institution in 1910 and was the location for First National Bank. Gordon said in 1928, the building was sold to American National Bank for $14,500.
“It became one of the strongest-managed banks in the country,” Gordon said. “There were offices above the bank. Back in 1933, the president of the bank got a call that John Dillinger’s men were casing the place, but nothing ever happened because Dillinger was captured before anything took place.”
American Trust National Bank operated out of the the building in 1990, followed briefly by Society Bank. KeyBank operated out of the building from 1995 until recently. The building celebrated its 110th anniversary this year.
Gordon saw potential in the building and its location.
“We bought the bank because we think it’s the No. 1-looking building in all of downtown Noblesville, and we feel that Noblesville is on a path to boom in business and in development, and we just felt it would be a great opportunity,” Gordon said.
Gordon did not disclose the purchase price. The Gordon family owns several other prominent downtown buildings, such as Logan Street Village and The Mix on Logan Street.
“Noblesville, in my opinion, is getting ready to really be a boom community,” Gordon said. “We are negotiating with a restaurant to go on the first floor (of the Gordon Building), preferably a steak and seafood-type restaurant, and a three-way liquor license with plenty of parking. So, this is all in the making right now. We hope to have all this established and rolling by the end of the year.”
The Gordons haven’t been able to show the building because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but as restrictions begin to loosen, they will continue to market the available space.
“This will be one of the finest locations in Noblesville,” Gordon said.
For more, visit thegordonbuilding.com.
Mural inspiration
When Dick Gordon went on a polar bear excursion in October 2019 in Hudson Bay, Canada, he saw artwork that inspired him to place murals on the Gordon Building in downtown Noblesville.
“There were 900 people in this town, and there were murals on all the buildings, and it just added a lot of spark to the little village in the cold,” Gordon said. “I thought, ‘That’s really fantastic,’ and this bank building has 13 spaces around it that looked like there were pads where banks had used those spaces for advertisements to advertise their banking, and I was looking at it one day and thought if we could just cover those with murals associated with Noblesville, that could be terrific.”
