Dripping Springs to preserve, renovate historic Stephenson Building

DRIPPING SPRINGS  — The city of Dripping Springs is in the process of bringing new life to a historic building downtown.

Located at 101 Fitzhugh Road, the Stephenson Building was built in 1939 during the Great Depression era by the Works Progress Administration — a program that employed millions of jobseekers for public works projects — initially as a high school addition to accommodate the growing student population at Dripping Springs Academy. Named after a student who died from a fatal sports injury, what was then known as Allen Stephenson High School served in its capacity as a school for 10 years until a new facility was built.

Since being replaced in 1949, the building has served multiple uses: community center, kindergarten school, office space for district/county administration, housing the VFW Post 2933 and American Legion Post 290 and more.

Additionally, in approximately 2009, the building was officially acquired by the city of Dripping Springs from Dripping Springs ISD.

“We did a swap with the district. At the time, the district was doing a swap of their high school campus and middle school campus. So, what's now the high school campus here in town was the middle school and they expanded that significantly. The city had a 14-acre park over there that was used by the adult softball league and we did a swap with the district where we gave them what was called Karhan Park in exchange for the Stevenson Building,” said Deputy City Administrator Ginger Faught. “Once the city acquired the building, it's really just been used for storage and when Founders Day rolls around annually, we'd use it for a green room for the musicians that would play at that. Functionally, it's been a kind of a storage depot for the city for quite some time.”

Faught added that the swap was seen as a “good deal” for the city and district at the time.

“The opportunity arose because of the district doing that expansion at the campus. I think the city saw that as an opportunity to acquire a pretty pivotal piece of downtown. Dripping Springs doesn't have a courthouse,” she said. “We don't have a square, right? We've got Mercer, we have Fitzhugh and right at the heart of that is the Stevenson Building, the Academy building and then this open lot there. So, we saw that as an opportunity to grab that piece of property and help the district at the same time with their expansion. While we didn’t have immediate plans, we knew ‘Let’s grab it and let’s hang onto it’ because downtown has such limited space, they're not making any more property down there.”

Recognizing that there is an opportunity to give something back to the community, the city of Dripping Springs has been working on preserving and restoring the Stephenson Building for future civic and community purposes.

“The impetus for the project really came out of the Comprehensive Plan work that the city has been doing. In 2010 and 2016, there were a couple of rounds of comprehensive planning and finding new uses of city properties was a major part and was written right into the plan,” said Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone Project Manager Keenan Smith. “Downtown stakeholders and businesses, and even the public, really wanted to see something amazing happen at the Stephenson Building.”

The following are highlights of the process so far:

• Stephenson High School was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013

• Architexas (the architect for the project) conducted a feasibility study of the building in 2020

• Named as a priority project for the TIRZ in spring of 2022

• The Historic Preservation Commission approved a Certificate of Appropriateness for the adaptive re-use and addition of the Stephenson Building on April 6, 2023

• The Dripping Springs City Council approved a Professional Services Agreement with Architexas  for Full Architectural Design Services with authorization to proceed with Design Development Phase on June 6, 2023

• The Design Development phase was completed and presented to council, including a cost estimate on Nov. 14, 2023

• The Dripping Springs City Council approved the acceptance of the Stephenson Building Rehabilitation and Improvement Project 100% Construction Documents on June 18, 2024

This project is for the preservation and renovation of the building to serve as a community meeting, programs and performance space, with some civic offices. The work includes hazardous materials abatement, cleaning the foundation, roof replacement, historic window restoration or replacement, gutter system replacement, restoration of the wood floor, ceiling restoration and installation of suspended acoustical ceiling in secondary spaces.

Other components include Texas Accessibility Standards/American Disabilities Act compliance, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, thermal and moisture protection, carpentry, finishes, earthwork, grading, paving and an addition for restrooms, storage and a backstage area.

“It's in great shape for an 80-something year old ... It’s the original roof on there and it is not really leaking all that badly, but we're getting a full envelope rehab. We're preserving the exterior and the interior, so that its history is preserved and brought forward in the project. There’s two big classrooms in there, it’s just a huge space with a dividing wall with folding doors that opens all the way up to a stage at one end — so, the original stage is in there. And I think that's what has a lot of people excited. The songwriters would love to get in there. It’s sort of going to become the Gruene Hall of Dripping Springs if we can pull it off,” Smith explained. “Acoustics are good. We're really preserving those two classrooms that open up into an amazing kind of an event space or you could use one or the other or both.”

Once complete, the Stephenson Building is going to have new life brought back into a historic structure, Smith said. And this project is closely behind some other TIRZ projects that are happening in Dripping Springs, including the site of downtown parking that is going to be located in the northern vacant lot.

“In combination with the parking lot and improvements to Mercer Street that we've done, it's just going to bring so much to stimulate revitalization to downtown Dripping Springs,” Smith said. “I think it's a great public benefit and a jewel of the community right in the beating heart of downtown Dripping Springs and it will do so much symbolically and economically to revitalize the community.”

The current cost estimate for the project is around $3.9 million.

“At this point, we're kind of sharpening our pencil, looking at funding sources. Next step would be bidding out the construction plans that we have, then we would award a contract and have a plan of finance for the project,” Faught said. “All of this is kind of happening right now. We're in our budget cycle for fiscal year 2025, so we're heavy into budget workshops [and] our budget year starts October 1.”

To learn more about the TIRZ’s current priority projects, visit www.cityofdrippingsprings.com/tirz/priority_projects.