Commissioners hear update on annex progress, Randle-Rather status

Gonzales County commissioners heard a report from John Duke of CPM, the county’s construction advisor, about progress made on the Gonzales County annex renovation and the status of the Randle-Rather Building downtown.

Duke said demolition on the south side was finishing up and crews were moving to the east side as of Monday, July 14.

“That was delayed a little bit into kind of just wanting to make sure that the shoring towers were installed,” Duke said. “There was a lot of site visits by the structural engineers, some concerns, and those got wrapped up. Ultimately, we got started on that last week, on Wednesday. Based on progress and where we're going, I expect the demo to be done by the end of this month.”

Duke said ie2, the general contractor for the project, has been onboarded and has been coming to weekly meetings with CPM and the architects and are getting ready to mobilize onto the site with a preconstruction meeting scheduled soon.

“They'll be ready to hit the ground running and the timeline is still tracking for late spring, early summer,” Duke added.

County Judge Pat Davis noted that one of the rafters appeared to have suffered structural damage during the demolition process and questioned what was being done to rectify that.

“Right now, we're going through the structural engineers assigning a fix for that, so they're trying to figure out the best way and one of the fastest ways to replace it,” Duke replied. “Originally they wanted a new truss, but that was going to take too long, so they were going to put an I-beam in there, but it was damaged by the demo contractors. My understanding right now is they agreed to pay for the cost of that. Ie2 will replace it and today will be putting in some temporary shorage.”

Precinct 2 Commissioner Donnie Brzozowski asked, “What happens if that thing falls? If you go take out all that shoring and it just goes down? Does the contractor have insurance to take care of that?”

“That’s kind of the nuclear option, but yes, they do have insurance, but we would have to figure out who was at fault for that,” Duke replied. “It shouldn't fall as much as the engineers went out here. I came out here on Wednesday, because there was a little bit of back and forth, so I refereed, and then we had the engineer come back out on Friday. They’re coming back out tomorrow. This is the time where everybody's most concerned — structural demo — but I gotta believe, as many times as they've looked at all the meetings we've had, it should be pretty good.”

Duke said on the Randle-Rather Building, O'Connell Architecture, the county’s architectural firm, has finished its investigation of the structural issues on the building and is in the process of creating “conceptual design repair drawings” for what is necessary to fix the problem, which should be back to CPM by Aug. 15.

“We'll take a look at those, and we'll get back to you with the recommendation, or at least an amount, and let you decide if you want to pursue the repairs or if you want to put (temporary debris containment) netting,” Duke said.

Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates (WJE) engineering firm conducted a facade assessment in April 2025 and confirmed — using visual observations and “hammer sounding” with rubber mallets on accessible units — that the limestone has incipient spalls in many areas as well as cracks or other distressed conditions in other spots throughout all three floors of the building, with the most imminent safety hazards appearing to be on the south side along the level 3 sill course, level two belt course and at the penthouse.