Downtown Longview building facing possible foundation issues

LONGVIEW, Texas (KLTV) - There is a building in downtown Longview that has caught some attention from passersby.

It’s located at the corner of Center and Tyler Streets, and it’s pretty easy to spot since it has a hole in the brick on the second story and barricades on the sidewalk on the corner.

The building’s owner, Longview Attorney Doug Monsour, knew about the cracks that run along the walls of the west side of his downtown building.

“We’ve retained engineers. They are looking at the matter. They are coming up with solutions and hopefully fairly soon we’ll have what our options are: whether or not it can be repaired, whether it needs to be torn down, whether it can be added onto, whether something could be made better on it. But, we just don’t know at this point in time,” Monsour said.

He said he knew the building had cracks in it when he bought it about four years ago, but he discovered it was likely more than just a few cracks.

“From what I understand, it’s a structural issue on this side of the building, so, on the side that’s closest to Center Street. And, it doesn’t seem to be having any issues over on the side of the building by Roma’s,” Monsour said.

Roma’s Italian Kitchen is up and running in half of the building. He said the sidewalk was dug up to investigate the foundation, and he was told the problem may have come from leaky water pipes.

“Once the water pipes were fixed, the ground is not saturated anymore, and it shrinks back up,” Monsour said.

There is a hole in the wall near the top of the building, but Monsour said the bricks were removed on purpose by an engineer.

“I don’t think those bricks were just randomly falling. I think some of the engineers that were looking at it pulled out some of the bricks to test some of the supports and see whether or not they will hold. And, they are,” Monsour said.

That part of the building once housed Master Travel. Monsour said they relocated but not because of the building.

“What we were hoping to do was put in either a restaurant or bar into Master Travel,” Monsour said.

That’s not going to happen until Monsour gets his final report from the contractor as to what it will take to fix the building.

Monsour said the building will remain as it is until he gets complete information about the building’s issues. That should happen in the next month or so.

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