Texas French Bakery will soon begin its reconstruction in earnest since a fire caused over a million dollars in damages in early 2021, according to recent public records.
The reconstruction’s delay was explained in part in a 2023 statement by the restaurant, as reported by KXAN.
“Since the fire, our understanding has been that if we submitted our application as a ‘rebuild’ permit, the city would allow us to dive right in, avoiding the elaborate and time consuming process known as ‘site plan review.’ Plan review can easily take a year or even longer, and in our case would almost certainly make it near impossible to rebuild anything like the grand old building that had stood at the corner of 29th St. since the 1940s,” Murph Wilcott stated.
“Well, it turns out we weren’t wrong about the permit, but unfortunately learned to our dismay that buried in all that city code, there’s provision imposing a short 12 month time limit within which to apply for the type of exemption we need. In order to meet that 12 month deadline we would have had to have the permit submitted by January of this year. Instead we spent all of last year and then some opening the commissary bakery and trying to get the TFB operation restarted. Fortunately, it does seem possible that the development office could waive the 12 month limitation – which is what we are now asking them to do.”
Fortunately, it now seems that the worst has passed and the come up is on the horizon.
Costing an estimated $3,000,000, construction notes list a “reconstruction of existing brick building damaged by fire. Scope includes structural bracing of existing brick walls to remain, new slab, new roof, and interior finish-out of dining area, kitchen, office, and restrooms,” set to finish by August 2025.
