Wichita’s 75-year-old Petroleum Club gets new owners, will soon get a new name, identity

Wichita’s Petroleum Club is turning 75 this year, and for the first time in its history, it has outside owners.

Soon, those new owners will give it a new name.

The Petroleum Club, a private club that operates from the ninth floor of the The Ruffin Building, 100 N. Broadway, has historically been member-owned and run as a 501c6, with a board of directors making decisions.

But recently, leaders of the club approached Scott Welsh, general manager of Terradyne Country Club, about taking over the club, which now has only about 100 members — compared to the 800-plus during its heyday in the 1980s. Over the past 24 years, the club’s ninth-floor real estate, which offers panoramic views of downtown Wichita and features a main room that can accommodate 215 people, has mostly been used for private events like weddings and weekday meetings of groups like The Pachyderm Club, The Wichita Independent Business Association and the International Facility Management Association. Most of the Wichitans who have enjoyed its views over recent years have been guests at weddings or office holiday parties rather than dues-paying members of the club.

Welsh, who purchased it along with Rob Patton, a Terradyne owner and a one-time member of the Petroleum Club, says that the new owners want to change its identity and make sure it survives past its 75th birthday.

“Rob, being a past member here, did not want to see the club go away,” Welsh said.

Hoping to take the club in a new direction — and with a goal of increasing membership — the partners plan to share details of their vision for the Petroleum Club at an open house on Thursday night.

Soon, Welsh said, The Petroleum Club will be known as The Ninth Floor Club and Venue.

The name change is meant to reflect a new direction for the club, which was founded by a group of oil men in 1949 but whose membership is now open to anyone — not just people working in that field. The new owners want to make sure the community understands that.

“I felt there was a disconnect in the community, no doubt,” said Welsh, who wants to attract new members without alienating legacy members, some of whom have belonged for 50 years or more.

“We have to be very careful with the current membership,” he said. “Make no mistake about it: There still is a connection from a lot of those members, and we don’t want to offend them. We don’t want to ruin the history of the club.”

Camaraderie and cocktails

The Petroleum Club was founded by Wichita oil producer Jack Heathman, who visited a similar club in Denver and wanted to replicate it. At the time, said the club’s current general manager Kathy Latham, Wichita did not allow liquor by the drink, and the men wanted a private club where they could get together, talk and enjoy cocktails.

A group of 12 invested the up-front money and sold 200 memberships, opening the club in the basement of the old Lassen Hotel. Three years later — in 1952 — it moved to the ninth floor of the KFH Building (now known as Sutton Place) at Market and William.

The club — which during its early days was open only to those working in the oil and gas industry — flourished, and photos from the 1950s and 1960s show smartly dressed families smiling at Easter buffets and businessmen in suits meeting over coffee and pastries.

In 1956, Heathman moved the club to the Union Center Building (now known as The National) on the southeast corner of First and Main, where it occupied most of the second floor. It didn’t move to its current spot until 1975, when the building was brand new and known as Fourth Financial Center.

The Petroleum Club was flush with members until about 1986, when oil prices plummeted. Membership steadily declined over the years, and by 2000, Latham said, the club was in danger of closing. But she had an idea to save it: private events. She began offering the big party room, which was sitting empty most nights, for weddings, company holiday parties and more.

“For the last 24 years, our primary success has been the revenues from events,” she said. “And the vision of Rob and Scott is to turn that the other direction. We still want to have events. But we also want to now be able to take care of membership the way they need to be taken care of.”

Members only

Part of the plan to attract new members includes a freshening up of the space, which has the same American Southwestern motif — with adobe-like walls and wood-beam ceilings — that it opened with in the mid-1970s.

The owners already have put down new carpet and removed the main room’s 16 original chandeliers, replacing them with more modern ones. (The owners plan to sell the 1970s candelabra chandeliers).

They’ve spruced up the entryway to the club, painted the restrooms and plan to remove the adobe separation wall in the spacious lobby, whose windows overlook the Ruffin Building’s main lobby below. They envision the future lobby as a modern-looking space where members can meet for casual gatherings or to watch a sporting event.

Another major renovation, which the owners hope to start working on at the beginning of 2025, will involve expanding the club’s footprint west from the lobby. They plan to open up the west wall and turn existing storage space into a swank bar and dining room exclusive to members. In an ode to the club’s history, they plan to call it The Petroleum Room.

“There are times when we have events going on,” Latham said. “...but we have a member that wants to come up and have a business conversation and have dinner. And where do we put them? So with this expansion, we’ll be able to have an exclusive member area and have an event going on.”

Included in the purchase of The Petroleum Club was the building’s second-floor cafeteria, known as the Walk Way Cafe. It includes a massive dining space open not only to the building’s tenants but also to the public that was open for weekday breakfast and lunch until the COVID-19 pandemic shut it down. Before that, business there was “booming,” Latham said.

The new owners plan to have it reopened by the end of the year, though they’re not sure what they’ll call it. Until then, members of the public are able to dine at the weekday lunch buffet on the ninth floor.

The event on Thursday night, which will last from 4 to 8 p.m., is designed to show prospective members what the club has planned for its next chapter. Anyone is welcome to attend. The new vision will be outlined at 5:45 p.m.

The event also will include music by Whitnie Means, complimentary appetizers, house wine and domestic beer, and liquor tastings by Una Vida Tequila and Terradyne Country Club.

Welsh said he’d love to sign up at least 100 new members during the event. Though Petroleum Club members usually pay a $300 initiation fee then $75-a-month dues, those who sign up on Thursday will have the initiation fee waived and will get reduced dues of $50 a month for the rest of 2024.

Member benefits, Welsh said, include access to the club’s private dining room and bar, special rates at Terradyne, and access to the many reciprocal clubs across the country. Members also can use the club as a downtown workspace or meeting space for their clients.

Welsh said he and his team want to rebuild the kind of camaraderie that the club had in its earliest days. To do that, he said, they have to walk the line of preserving the past while looking to the future.

“There certainly are members that like this feel,” Welsh said of the club’s longtime aesthetic. “And then there is the newer generation that might be interested in a little bit different feel. Our job as a team is to protect the history of the club and maybe protect the feel of the club but also introduce it as something new as well.”