A representative for the investment group that purchased the former U.S. federal courthouse building in Des Moines said the group plans to convert the building into upscale, for-purchase residential units.

Brian Seidensticker of Last Best Partners LLC said the firm closed on the purchase of the  courthouse at 123 E. Walnut St. on Sept. 9, and is in the process of determining how many units can be included in the conversion.

The U.S. General Services Administration put the five-level, 66,700-square-foot building up for auction earlier this year with a starting bid of $60,000. According to a GSA news release, it sold for $2.6 million.

Seidensticker said the Des Moines project is different from most undertaken by the Montana-based firm because it’s in good shape in a nice area of the community.

“We are typically working with distressed properties that are on the edge of where you want to be, probably a little more into where you don’t want to be in town,” he said. “We look at it as trying to revive a part of the community and this is kind of the opposite. It’s where everybody wants to be. The East Village is the place to be.

“So it’s unique for us compared to what we’re typically taking on,” he said.

The courthouse, built in the late 1920s, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Seidensticker said while not “set in stone,” the plan is to convert the building into larger, upscale residential units with luxury accommodations, rather than to stack as many units in as possible.

“It’s a beautiful building and we want to retain as much of that character as we can,” he said. “To do that, it’s going to have to be higher-end residential.”

His team is currently doing the analysis of what that could look like financially. Seidensticker said he was hesitant to be specific on what the investment in the building will be, but said it could range from $10 million to $30 million.

Part of that is working with the state’s historic preservation office to make sure the planned work meets their requirements. Seidensticker said he hopes to complete that process in the next few months. Construction likely wouldn’t begin until next summer at the earliest, and more likely next fall, he said.

Seidensticker said neither he nor other members of his team had been to Des Moines before and didn’t visit until after they learned they had won the bid. When they visited, he said they were pleasantly surprised at what they saw.

“When I landed in Des Moines I had this sinking feeling of ‘What did we get wrong here?’ because we purchased this building at a price that maybe was too good to be true, and after that first trip left with ‘Wow, we got extremely lucky’ because we got an amazing building in an amazing town, in an amazing area,” he said.

Seidensticker, who lives in Akron, Ohio, described Des Moines as a hidden gem.

“Downtown Des Moines is one of the nicest downtowns that I’ve been to in a long time,” he said.

The GSA put the courthouse up for auction after federal judicial operations moved to the new federal courthouse at 101 E. Locust St.

Seidensticker said his group’s goal is to maintain the historic character of the old building and enhance its presence along the city’s riverfront.

“There’s zero plan that we’ll swipe the slate clean and start over,” he said. “It’s too cool of a building and too cool of a history to do anything of the sort. Our goal is to preserve the character of that part of town and not put something in there that doesn’t fit. We’re not trying to demo it and start over. Neither one of those things are in our vocabulary.”