“My uncle was an architect in Dallas and we got involved with a lot of projects in Austin. When he was responsible for working with Trammell Crowe, did a number of the hotels and everything we needed. So I watched a lot of that. So when it came down to get an architect for this project I got him to come up and help. And there were really three houses up here. And this is the only one that remained standing the church tore down, apartment, but that’s when the French teams and Joe Johnson wanted to redo a building. So we located the building for them. The old automobile store there for the atrium and Max came and Chapman and he was the architect, and did that building completely and we did the parking garage too. Incredible building, best office building in Wichita Falls. You still got the same tenants I put in there. Whenever that was. I see. We had Bill Clements as governor of Texas come in. So that was how I was hooked on historical properties and working with districts and things like that.”
“The amazing thing is the quality of construction back in the yesteryear. That example is this building right here, the preservation of the interior. You know in 1910 this was a row of houses overlooking downtown. And this was the who’s who, more or less the first country club area. And these were exceptional extraordinary houses, of course around the corner Frank Kell lived in the big house. But I think a good example is by using preservation restoration properties that are typically in grave location. You can use that property for something else. It may be residential and may convert it to a restaurant, it could be anything. An example when we did the Neon Spurred, it was built in 1920s Bonnie and Clyde and around down there. And we just fell in love with that building. It was small for what we were wanting to do but we couldn’t beat the traffic. All the horses and going across the street to MPEC and we said, well, It’s simple. All we do is beer and barbecueand that’s how Neon Spur came in and that was from an old grocery store, on Burnett Street.” – Andy Lee
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