Bank buys Marquette properties

The Marquette Tower and the Marquette Center were sold Tuesday afternoon for $3.6 million in a foreclosure sale held at the Cape Girardeau County Courthouse.

The only bidder on the properties: Great Southern Bank of Springfield, Mo., mortgage holder of the historic structures in downtown Cape Girardeau's.

No other bidders appeared.

The properties sold as Vaughn Prost, president of Prost Builders Inc., of Jefferson City, Mo., looked on in silence. After the sale, he blamed an inability to find private tenants or obtain sufficient commitments from state government to keep the buildings solvent.

Prost estimated that his company had invested $10 million in renovating the two buildings.

"From the start, when the doors first opened, I had been feeding money into the buildings," he said. "I fed in almost $1 million, and I can't feed it anymore."

Prost put the buildings on the market last October, asking $4.5 million for the Marquette Tower and $1.4 million for the Marquette Center.

In recent months, he'd sought to sell the properties to the buildings' main tenant, the state of Missouri.

"I've tried to talk to them but they were not ready to make a decision," he said. "Unfortunately for me, that is just the way it is."

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126