HARLINGEN — The historic Reese Building downtown is leasing floors three and four to a new tenant.
The vacant space on those floors — 27,000 square 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. The Texas Access to Justice Foundation provides funding to ProBAR.
ProBAR currently has offices on Van Buren Avenue in Harlingen. 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.
“I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with all parties involved,” said real estate agent Connie de la Garza, broker and owner of Bahnmann Realty, who represented the owners of the Reese.
“The Reese is now definitely established as the place to have a first-class office,” he added, noting that with the ProBAR lease only the building’s second of five floors remains available for development.
Noble Texas Builders of Weslaco is renovating the third and fourth floors and has a target date to finish in March 2017.
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.
Other tenants in the Reese Building at 202 S. 1st St., which originally opened in 1925 as a motel, are Colletti’s Restaurant and Valley Family Dentistry.
