HARLINGEN — The Reese is filling up.
Two of the vacant three floors of the historic five-story Reese Building downtown have been leased.
The vacant space on those two floors — 27,000 feet in all — is being renovated at a cost of $1.3 million to the design of the new tenant, the nonprofit South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, more commonly known as ProBAR.
ProBAR provides free legal services to asylum seekers detained in South Texas by the federal government. It is a joint project of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Texas and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
“If you think about it, this will be like the largest law firm in the Valley,” Mayor Chris Boswell said yesterday, standing amid the construction work on The Reese’s third floor. “That may hurt some people’s feelings, but I like to see lawyers gainfully employed — especially if they’re not competing with me.”
ProBAR currently has offices on Van Buren Avenue in Harlingen. Floors three and four of the Reese Building will house the offices of ProBAR’s Children’s Project, which employs 10 attorneys, two Board of Immigration Appeals accredited representatives, 20 paralegals and two full-time volunteers, according to its website.
The Children’s Project provides legal aid to unaccompanied undocumented minors at shelters in South Texas.
“The Reese is now definitely established as the place to have a first-class office,” said real estate broker Connie de la Garza, owner of Bahnman Realty, which represented the owners of The Reese.
Negotiations between the owners of Reese Plaza Development, Jo Wagner and Todd Aune, and ProBAR representatives began a year ago. The Harlingen design and architecture firm Megamorphosis Inc. was hired by ProBAR to oversee the renovation of both floors and that commenced two weeks ago.
“I am so proud to be a part of the revived downtown,” Wagner said. “Across this great country history is being destroyed as we tear down old buildings to make room for needs we see as important today.
“I saw the restoration of The Reese, a building with a wonderful history, as uniting both past and present to create a beautiful addition to our community,” Wagner added.
Boswell had praise for Wagner, who owns and runs Colletti’s Italian Restaurant on the ground floor of the Reese Building, and her son, Aune.
“I can’t say enough about Jo Wagner and Todd Aune and the tremendous investment that they have made in this community — their hometown,” Boswell said. “Where they have grown their other businesses and wanted to come in and make a real difference in the local economy by taking a building that was a historic building but had fallen into such disrepair, and to make it into a beautiful asset of the City of Harlingen once again.”
Noble Texas Builders of Weslaco is renovating the third and fourth floors and has a target date to finish by March 2017, de la Garza said.
