By Ken Stickney

ken.stickney@panews.com

Here’s the goal at Port Arthur City Hall when it comes to its downtown historic district — maintain and enhance the integrity of the area by meeting accepted preservation standards, retain the “ambience” of the area and give home and property owners guidance in rehabbing and preserving their properties.

Now all preservation enthusiasts need is a guidebook.

That’s why the city has hired Hardy-Heck-Moore Inc., an Austin firm that has done previous work for Port Arthur. In 2012, the company did an historic survey downtown in response to concerns about demolishing old buildings.

Nowadays, the city has a different aim than tearing down buildings. Pamela D. Langford, Development Services manager in the Planning and Zoning Department, said Port Arthur is using a $15,000 Certified Local Government Grant from the Texas Historical Commission — the city itself must match that amount — to launch a $35,000 project that focuses on a defined downtown “overlay” district with these boundaries:

• Everything west of Woodworth, including Rose Hill Manor and the adjacent park
• Augusta Avenue
• South of Procter to the seawall.

It’s an established district that’s been in place for a quarter century, and it includes some of the most historically precious buildings in Port Arthur, including Rose Hill, Pompeiian Villa, the Woodrow William Early College High School, Gates Library, the former First United Methodist Church, as well as private homes along Lakeshore Drive.

The idea, Langford says, is to develop and establish guidance for Port Arthur citizens on how to rehabilitate historical properties, meeting requirements of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior standards.

For example, if you want to replace windows, the guidelines would suggest how to do that while maintaining the historical integrity of the property. If you want to paint, the guidelines would suggest colors appropriate to the era of the building.

“Citizens would get guidance as well as alternatives,” Langford said.

The guidelines would also suggest how to do “infill,” building new construction on now empty lots that would be reminiscent of the era when the neighboring structures were built.

Hardy-Heck-Moore will research, document and photograph buildings from Woodworth as far as Houston Avenue and encourage property owners to offer information or interesting facts about their home or building. The project will not result in any zoning changes.

There are more than 200 property owners within the district — these include government entities — and they will be invited to a public meeting from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Aug. 23 at the Carl A. Parker Multipurpose Building on the Lamar State College Port Arthur campus. The goal is to solicit feedback from residents and property owners within the project areas.

Langford said the project will end with guidelines for the designated district, with properties and landmarks throughout the Port Arthur and with some guidelines for downtown.

She said the importance of guidelines has become more pressing because major storms since Hurricane Rita in 2005 have affected historic buildings and infill has occurred without direction or guidance.

“We don’t want to take away from the ambience of the area,” she said. “We need some types of standards in place.”