County contracts with firm to develop Courthouse master plan

Gonzales County commissioners officially approved contracting with Tere O’Connell and O’Connell Architects LLC on a Courthouse master plan on Monday, Dec. 11, but not before one commissioner gave his reasoning for why he didn’t think the county could afford to spend that money at this time.

Last month, commissioners heard a presentation from O’Connell on the process of drafting a master plan — the first necessary step to apply for up to $10 million in grant funding to restore the Courthouse from the Texas Historical Commission’s Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program (THCPP).

O’Connell and Chuck Larosche of WJE Engineering also pointed out some of the issues the Courthouse is currently having that would need to be addressed.

The county would be responsible for paying the cost to produce the master plan, which is estimated to be about $219,000. However, they cannot apply for any government grants, especially from the THC, without the document, County Judge Pat Davis said.

“For any future grant applications, you have to have a master plan, regardless of requirements. There's no way around it,” Davis said. “To me, this is something that we’ve got to have. A majority of all the courthouses have a master plan.

“You’ve got a $10 million grant that could come that your taxpayers couldn't pay down the road, even if we had to put $2 million on it,” Davis added. “It's a very historic building and every day people are coming here and they say how nice it is, but there's a lot under the scenes with water that runs into the basement and everything else, so it’s something that's got to be addressed if we're gonna continue to maintain it.”

“In addition to the requirements for the grant, this will also be a comprehensive plan for maintenance and restoration for the future,” Precinct 4 Commissioner Collie Boatright added. “Regardless, even if you didn't go for the grant, it will still be good to have for basic requirements and for inspection purposes.”

However, Precinct 2 Commissioner Donnie Brzozowski said paying nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a master plan “comes at a bad time because we’ve got that annex building,” referring to the county’s need to rehabilitate its 43-year-old Courthouse Annex on Sarah DeWitt Drive due to concerns about structural stability. All agencies in the building were told they had to vacate it by Dec. 15 so the county can decide what it will do to fix the problem.

“We haven’t figured out what we’re going to do with it yet,” Brzozowski said. “We’re going to spend a quarter of a million to get this and we might need that money to fix (the annex).”

Brzozowski said he has brought up the condition the Courthouse windows are in — including how some are painted and some are not — as well as photos O’Connell and Larosche took of paint that has begun peeling off the building.

“In my opinion, I think we need to let this (master plan) slide right now, because we've got a lot of things we need may have to do on that building (the annex),” Brzozowski said. “For some of this stuff that we're talking about, we can fix it ourselves. I mean, it's just like your house, you can walk around your house and you can find stuff that needs to be fixed. We need to fix the windows, we need to paint the outside windows. The first thing we need to do is fix the windows; I mean, they look terrible.”

“We can hire people like painters and carpenters and fix these windows. They're going to do the same thing we're going to do, but we can give it a facelift and not spend a quarter million dollars getting a grant paper put together. I know we need to do it. I know it's a big deal, but I'm thinking it comes in at a bad time and I think that some of this stuff we should have been keeping up with a long time ago.”

Davis responded by saying, “If we're gonna pay for it ourselves, I mean, it'd be nice to have grant money to help us to pay. Regardless, you technically just can't come in on a historical building and start remodeling it; it has to be in the specs of the THC.

“I think this is something that we really need to go for,” Davis said. “I mean, even if it cost you $2 million and you are able to get $8 million (in grants), that's money that the taxpayers won't have to pay, and we're utilizing this building today. Financial wise, we're still in great shape as a county. Y'all been frugal over the years. I don't think it will be anything that will set us back too far.”

“There's a good time to do something and a bad time. You don't see too many ranches building a bunch of new fences and bulldozing when they are in a drought,” Brzozowski said. “And I think that other building — we don't know what we're gonna have to do with it. We've got all these people displaced right now. What are you going to do with them if we start remodeling the courthouse and we have to fix that building, where are you gonna put those people?”

Davis said the professional who has looked at the annex has indicated he doesn’t think it has to be torn down, but the walls will need to be shored up. Davis added the county can find ways to save money when it comes to what they do on the annex because it doesn’t qualify as a historic building (50 years of age or older), so there are less hoops to jump through when it comes to fixing the issues it has.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Dell Whiddon, La Fleur and Boatright voted in favor of contracting for the master plan, while Brzozowski voted against it.

Davis also told commissioners that representatives from O’Connell and WJE were looking in the attic at the Courthouse to determine how to place HVAC and heating throughout the building.

“There's some stuff that needs to be addressed immediately because of the heat that goes through that could pose a problem by igniting,” Davis said.

Davis also said maintenance discovered “a black spot under the eave by the bell tower” and has decommissioned the Christmas lights for now because of concerns that a fire might start.

“That was scary,” Davis said. “We had them on for the Christmas parade and there are a lot of them that are out and it didn’t look good, but … whew, we got lucky.”

Additional Christmas lights the county had originally ordered for $45,000 were sent back to the company because “through the Historical Commission, you're not supposed to put any lights on the Courthouse if you're going for grants … they don't like drilling into the building.”