The owner of a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed skyscraper in Oklahoma is suing a nonprofit that works to protect the architect’s legacy, arguing that the preservation group’s efforts to enforce an easement on the property have affected its ability to sell the building.
The 19-story building, Price Tower, located in Bartlesville and commissioned in 1952, has been on the auction block since August and is scheduled to be sold on Nov. 18.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy filed liens against the owner in August based on the sale of some Wright-designed furnishings from the building, which the conservancy says are covered under an easement it was granted in 2011 by a previous nonprofit owner of the building.
Copper Tree Group, which last year bought what experts consider to be Wright’s only skyscraper, says the easement is no longer in effect.
In the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday in District Court in Washington County, Okla., Copper Tree Group is asking a judge to declare the liens null and void, to enjoin the conservancy from interfering with the sale of the building or its furnishings and to award at least $75,000 in damages.
The court fight is the latest in a series of complications for the building, which was originally built for the H.C. Price Company. Though Wright designed other tall structures, Price Tower is considered his only skyscraper because it is stands higher than the others and was built to fulfill Wright’s formal vision for a skyscraper as a vertical street that combined offices, residences and retail businesses.
But the tower has faced financial problems for years and was sold last year to a real estate subsidiary of the Copper Tree Group for $10 and an agreement to take on an existing $600,000 debt.
The company, led by Cynthia Blanchard, a Bartlesville resident, said it had hoped to renovate the building but had hit hurdles, including an inability to secure funding. The building is being sold on an auction website and has been closed since Sept. 1.
Ms. Blanchard has said that, given the financial difficulties the building faced, she had no choice but to sell 10 furnishings that Wright designed for Price Tower to a furniture reseller.
But the conservancy says those items were governed by a preservation easement it was granted in 2011, when the building, then owned by a nonprofit organization known as the Price Tower Arts Center, was seeking recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The conservancy says that the easement gives it the right to preserve the condition of the tower and its furnishings. Its liens are designed to block any further sale of the furnishings.
But lawyers for Copper Tree said in court papers that, under the language of the extinguishment clause in the easement, it effectively ended when the arts center sold the building last year.
The conservancy declined to comment on the lawsuit but has previously rejected the argument that the easement was affected by the change in ownership of the building last year.
The auction had originally been scheduled to begin on Oct. 7, but was postponed after a Tulsa-based company, McFarlin Building LLC, filed a lawsuit claiming that it signed a contract in May to buy Price Tower from Ms. Blanchard for $1.4 million. That lawsuit is pending.
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