Mayor: Kress building ‘worse than I thought’
City Council will decide fate of structure May 26
After visiting the Kress building in downtown, Texarkana, Texas, City Council members are weighing in on whether the building should be demolished.
Mayor Bob Bruggeman had only seen pictures of the structure at 116 W. Broad St. before visiting with a group of city staff members and citizens Monday afternoon before the council meeting at City Hall.
“The overall condition of the building was worse than I thought it would be, gauging by the photographs,” Bruggeman said. “There is a large, gaping hole in the roof and that water comes down and accumulates in the basement. The building is falling apart within, looking at the fixtures. It is in pretty bad shape. I think the council’s decision will be to have it torn down.”
The building operated as the Kress building until 1979 and was condemned that year said David Orr, director of planning and development. The city agreed to take the building from a dissolving nonprofit, Bi-State Women’s Center Inc., in 2009. The council at the time wanted to find a city use for the building, but has not been able to find funding to restore.
Orr said the council will vote on
the fate of the building at its next meeting on May 26, which is being held on a Tuesday night because Memorial Day falls is that Monday. Orr and other city staff members recommend taking $300,000 from the city’s general fund to cover the costs of the demolition, but not all council members support that.
Ward 1 Council Member Bradfield Casteel said $300,000 is a lot of money, and he would rather see that used to tear down buildings in neighborhoods. He said he thinks citizens would prefer burned out and dilapidated buildings to be torn down around where they live, rather than in downtown.
“I don’t think this is going to satisfy the citizens of Texarkana, Texas,” Casteel said. “That is a lot of money to spend when we have so many other uses for it.”
However, Ward 2 Council Member Willie Ray, among others, said she had seen enough Monday afternoon to persuade her the building needs to come down. “I just thought it was a real big mess, and it could be a danger to those around it,” Ray said. “I feel that something should be done, because it could be unsafe. … I have got a lot of faith and feel that we will get to doing what is right. I would like to see our downtown come to life again. I remember when I grew up in Mount Pleasant and we would drive to downtown Texarkana for our clothes and for Easter. We didn’t go to Tyler, we went to Texarkana. I would like to see our downtown back like it used to be.”
This sentiment is shared by Tracey Prather, a radio newscaster who covers the Four States Area and a citizen activist who has taken an interest in downtown. Prather, who is originally from Hot Springs, Ark., but has lived in Texarkana for several years, has spent much time researching downtown Texarkana for her Haunted Texarkana walking ghost tours, which allow people to find out history of downtown and perhaps get a bit spooked. Prather has been pleading with the city at the last two council meetings for a structural engineer to be paid to look at the building and analyze how safe it is.
“I have been asking the council to get help from the Texas Historic Commission and to get someone to come and look at this building who has the knowledge to know if it can be saved,” Prather said. “There is so much history in our downtown worth saving.”
Orr said the council’s vote on funding next meeting would free up money from the city’s budget for an engineer to come and decide if the building is savable.
Jason Horton, an attorney who works in a building adjacent to the Kress, said he would like to see it restored, but the basement is filled with water and pieces of the facade are falling off. Orr said one piece of the facade that fell from around the Kress lettering crashed through a steel awning.
“The bleeding heart in me wants the building restored, but the investor in me is looking at dollars and cents,” Horton said at Monday’s meeting. “The lawyer in me thinks liability.”
Ward 6 Council Member Josh Davis said he was concerned about the building and wanted answers to come from a structural engineer who would be qualified with the necessary expertise about the building.
“During discussions, a structural engineer is one of the things the city staff was asking for,” Davis said. “(City Manager) John Whitson said we don’t have a report from a structural engineer, and we would not likely get one until we got a bid, because there are not many structural engineers who would do pro bono work if there wasn’t work at the end of it.
“I would really love to see what a structural engineer has to say after they really get in there. They are equipped to go into older buildings like this and see if the facade is savable. Those are the questions I have. There are several people concerned with border or tiles falling down off the facade, which is absolutely dangerous and is a liability. We don’t want that to happen. But if they said the structure is worth saving and underneath has a rock solid foundation, then we could be asking ourselves another question.”