Time to bid adieu to landmark building

For those folks holding out hope the Kress Building in downtown Texarkana can be saved, it is time to let those dreams die.

This is not your ditch to die in.

It is time for this structure to come down before someone gets hurt.

This building is beyond repair—at least the kind of repair that makes any kind of strategic or financial sense.

It is a shame Texarkana, Texas, is going to have to spend a large lump of money—$300,000—to remove this once-significant building, but the alternative, saving it, is even more expensive, and in truth, little is left to save. Photos published last week in the Gazette accurately depict the extent of its decline. There is no hope here. It is little more than a pile of rubble with a facade.

As someone who has supported preservation efforts for years, who has been restoring a house in a historic district since before it was a historic district, I can say this with certainty: With old buildings, there are points of no return.

Foundation damage, structural damage, water damage can individually turn a building into a hopeless cause. The Kress Building is a victim of all three and more.

The city doesn’t need to spend any more time studying this situation. It needs to spend the money to clean out this space and move on. If anything else should be studied, maybe it should be seeking out a less expensive demolition bid.

If this building was going to be saved—and yes, it was once worth saving—it should have been done years ago.

But this town has a history of waiting too long before trying to preserve its heritage.

The building, at 116 W. Broad St., was evaluated by structural engineers in 2012 who determined “the structure appears to be unstable and needs to be demolished as soon as possible.”

Ten years before that, the Texas-side Building and Standards Commission had recommended demolition.

So why are we even having this conversation? What has changed? Only the ravages of time by incremental and accelerating degree.

If the building were to be saved, efforts should have begun in the early 1980s, before decay destroyed its bones and its body.

Corporately, during its haydey that extended more than 80 years, Kress stores were known for their architecture, particularly the storefronts. The chain’s owner, Samuel H. Kress, saw his stores as “works of public art” along America’s main streets.

Perfect example: I grew up near a town—Emporia, Kan.— that had a beautiful Kress Building built in 1929. In 1982, it was renovated by private investors. Today, it is still beautiful, housing an assortment of office, boutique and retail space, even a little bakery.

But it is too late for that to happen here.

Kress ran out of gas as a retailer in the 1970s, selling and leasing off its properties. The Kress Building here, which appears to predate the Emporia store by a few years and sports a different and unique storefront design, was falling into disrepair by 1980, when it was closed.

By the 1980s, Texarkana’s business community had been smitten by the growing urge to move to the Interstate 30 corridor. Nobody was paying much attention to the decline of downtown or had the foresight or political clout to turn it around. And few in the community were listening to those who did care.

At the very least, if you think a structure has historic or architectural value, its owners must secure the exterior— think roof, for example—from the elements. Rain as much as anything else ruined this building.

We will all pay the cost of having this mess moved out and cleaned up through our ongoing tax support of city operations, but don’t blame the folks at City Hall for this problem. They inherited it.

The initial decision to take ownership of this gifted property in 2009 was a bad one, likely made with good intentions. Chalk it up in life’s “no good deed goes unpunished” column. Officials thought then there was grant money to have the eyesore and safety risk removed. There wasn’t.

But it does us no good to cry over spilled milk, or whatever other term you might use to describe the gunk floating around and collecting in the basement of the this once-celebrated building.

I understand there is some sentimentality attached to this building. I fully appreciate those feelings. But get real. Time to stop tiptoeing around the truth. Time to tear it down.