CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — There's been a courthouse in Refugio since 1850. The current structure is fifth courthouse the county has seen and it was finished in 1917. The building was expanded in the 1950s and again in the late 1980s.
While it's withstood the test of time, Hurricane Harvey did it no favors and caused a lot of damage. Now, Refugio County Judge Gigi Poynter said the county is ready to start making all the needed repairs thanks to a state loan and grant.
"We were, we were very fortunate that after Hurricane Harvey, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, they gave us a loan for, I believe it was $6 million," Poynter said. "And then a few years later, we reapplied and they gave us three million more dollars. So, we do have a total of, I think a total of $10 million from the Texas Division of Emergency Management give or take."
Recently, the county was awarded a $4 million emergency grant from the Texas Historical Commission (THC) as part of that agency's courthouse restoration program.
"We're going to start by replacing two of the large portions of the roof, and then after that, we had a meeting with our architecture team yesterday and discussed phase one, since we did get that THC money, we've been able to kind of revise how we're doing our phased approach to the restoration process," she said.
The county will also replace the HVAC system and waterproof the basement. There are also plans to replace all of the windows, some of which are currently covered with plywood.
New exterior doors will go in and all of the concrete lining the building will be ripped off.
"We're looking forward to it," Refugio County District Clerk Sylvia Lopez said. "I know that it's gonna look a lot better maybe back to the way it used to be. And instead of seeing our holes and our ceilings falling apart and you know, the wood board coming off, the paint coming off. So, we're looking forward to it. "
Poynter added that the most northern section of the courthouse will be demolished because it was built in the 1980s and it is too new to fall under THC grant.
The full restoration work is expected to begin by March 2025.