HARLINGEN — The city’s iconic Baxter Building, constructed in 1927, was certainly built to last.
Now, with renovation beginning, it will continue to endure as single-family apartments.
The nine-story building is a common example of what is known as the “Medical Arts Building” era of American architecture, and similar buildings of the genre can be seen in cities across the South and the Midwest.
At least the ones that have not been demolished are still viewable.
Developers MRE Capital, based in Kansas City, Missouri, applied for and won $3.3 million in state tax credits over a decade as part of its plan to restore the Baxter Building close to its original condition.
The developer will turn the building into 24 apartments, of which 19 will be low-income units.
MRE has finished or is currently involved in similar renovation projects in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama and Texas. Several of these properties are remarkably similar in appearance to the Baxter Building — older, urban high-rises of six, eight and 11 stories.
“We’re very excited,” Dan Sallier, MRE co-founder, said yesterday. “We’ve got an eight-month construction schedule we’re pushing for. Hopefully, everybody can see dramatic changes as it goes on, and this building will return to what it once was.
“It’s a beautiful building.”
Sallier said MRE has already finished renovating around a dozen mostly historic hotels, using a similar tax credit strategy to ensure the survival of historic buildings in cities like Pratt, Kansas, Claremore, Oklahoma, Cisco, Texas, and Plainview, Texas.
The Plainview project turned a former downtown Hilton Hotel into 27 apartments using, like in Harlingen, a housing tax credit approved by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.
Those apartments rent for $500 a month for a one-bedroom, $600 for a two-bedroom and $675 for a three-bedroom, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported in 2016. Apartment renters qualify with a $25,000 to $35,000 income limit based on the size of the family intending to live there.
It isn’t known precisely what the apartments in the Baxter Building will rent for, but developers previously have said their pricing will mirror the market rate.
Sallier said one of the reasons his company was attracted to the Baxter Building property was the building itself. Structurally, he said, it’s tip-top.
“Even in the shape that it’s in, the integrity of the building is just like it was when they finished building it,” he said, standing across the street from the front of the building, where contractors were busy gutting interior rooms. “From the fit and finish aspect of it we’ve got a long ways to go, but the bones of it are concrete and steel, and you can’t beat those two things in an environment like this.”
