Commercial Roofing Contractors in Saint Paul, TX

St. Paul opened its doors in 1929 but closed due to financial struggles.

MEXIA, Texas — When you think of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Texas, the first that may come to mind may be Wiley College, Prairie View A&M University or Texas Southern University.

But there was a small Black college built in the middle of Mexia, TX named Saint Paul Normal and Industrial College and it impacted many lives for the short amount of time it was open.

The story of St. Paul began with Reverend Lee Wilder Thomas, a Limestone County native born in 1873.

Before helping found St. Paul, Thomas himself graduated from Wiley College, another HBCU in Marshall, TX.

He met his wife, Clementine “Clemmie” Estella Ross, in Limestone County and they had 13 children.

Today's descendants of Rev. Thomas weren't even aware that he founded a Black college in Mexia.

It came to a surprise to Schuyler Carter, a great-grandchild of Thomas, and her family when she found out the history of her great-grandfather. But with his history of always giving back to the community, she says it wasn't far from the man he was.

"It is so vital for the next generation to know what these people did to invest in the Black community. While there's no building where the school was, I don't believe it's purpose diminished at all and people need to know that," Carter explained.

The idea for St. Paul arose in 1906 with members of the Primitive Baptist Church.

Then in 1912, Thomas found oil on the land he owned and struck big financially. With so many Black people residing in Mexia at the time, Mexia native and historian Dan Keeling says a lot of Black people struck big too.

“When you get to the hill in Mexia where the college is, it's more dry, more airy, with more mesquite trees. That's where the majority of Black people lived. So when they found the oil, the majority of people who got money from the oil boom were Black families.”

With his newly found fortune, Thomas wanted to invest in education and the progression of the Black community. So he invested $9,000 of his oil earnings (over $150,000 in today's U.S. dollar) to build St. Paul Normal and Industrial College for the Mexia community.

Many other Black locals also pitched in however they could to make this college happen.

“Field slaves and sharecroppers who didn't have much money, not much means, took their earned means to build this college,” Primitive Baptist Crunch minister John Richardson shared.

Construction was completed in February 1929 and the school was then opened in September 1929.

The school opened with 35 students and had a prime focus on education while also providing trade courses. While it was open, the Black community thrived and the school even hosted local events.

But due to the Great Depression, teachers were sometimes not compensated in full, bills were paid late, and the school’s debt grew.

“Our obligations continued to increase” and “...for years we were unable to keep up on the interest on the principal of the main debt," Rev. Thomas explained in the Mexia Newspaper.

In an article written by Carter, she explained how the property was foreclosed upon in 1940. Thankfully, Rev. Thomas saved it again, arranging (along with two other pastors) for new financing. Things looked up. Members of many Primitive Baptist churches in the area fervently raised money and paid off the new debt faster than expected.

"Rev. Thomas was able to sign a note with the estate of a local banker and actually got to college back. They had a ten year note and they got it back in three years,” Keeling said.

Things were looking up for the school for a while but it still wasn't enough to keep the doors open.

The school eventually closed for good in 1953.

While all that can be seen of St. Paul are broken pillars and carved in bricks, the families of people who taught at or attended the school are still in Mexia today.

Mexia local Bill Proctor said my father was a teacher here at the college for quite a while.

Primitive Baptist Church minister Henry V. Chambers Jr said his father received a certificate from St. Paul and this school will forever be in his heart.

The Primitive Baptist Church is the last building standing. They now own the 31 acres of land the college was built on.

The church ministers have now made it their mission to finish what reverend L.W. Thomas started over 70 years ago.

"We are now here to resurrect that, and to make it what it should be which is a recognized, legitimate higher education college for young people who are trying to better themselves educationally so that they can better themselves economically,”

After Keeling spent two years submitting proposals to the Texas Historical Commission to recognize St. Paul as an historical marker, it was approved to have a historical marker put in front of where the school once stood.

The unveiling of the marker is expected to happen sometime in the summer. The hope for the future of St. Paul is that it will be open and available for the Black community in Central Texas again within the next few years.

With higher interest rates and rising construction costs, real estate analysts are predicting a cool down in Dallas-Fort Worth’s red-hot apartment building market.

But developers are already working on plans for thousands of new D-FW rental units coming this year.

North Texas leads the country in apartment building, with more than 65,000 rental units in the construction pipeline at the start of the year. That number is over 70% greater than what was underway just four years ago.

Units under construction at the end of each year.

65,462

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Chart: Steve Brown/Dallas Morning News Source: RealPage Get the data Created with Datawrapper

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With a credit crunch making it harder to finance new apartment starts, real estate industry forecasters are all expecting fewer new rental projects to break ground this year in D-FW and nationwide.

“Starts will definitely slow this year, but they won’t fall off the cliff,” said Jay Parsons, the top economist at Richardson-based RealPage. “Construction loans are getting harder to come by, as some lenders have become over-allocated, and deals that are occurring often require lower loan-to-value ratios and therefore more equity.

“Those trends do not impact every developer equally, though,” Parsons said. “It’s thinning out the pool, but it’s not like 2009 when starts basically evaporated.”

The National Association of Home Builders is also forecasting a decline in a nationwide apartment building.

“We are still seeing a significant pullback for multifamily starts due to the largest number of apartments under construction since 1973,” said the builders’ trade group’s chief economist Robert Dietz. “We see a 28% pullback for multifamily starts in 2023.”

The supply of D-FW rental units on the way is still staggering. More than 36,000 new apartments are scheduled to open here in 2023.

Just in the first two months of the year, local builders disclosed plans for another 9,200 rental units in almost 30 projects.

Still, most builders say they expect fewer D-FW apartment starts this year — even as new developments start.

“We’re starting to see slowdowns in permit applications,” said Tyler Sibley, vice president with developer Kairoi Residential. “I suspect you’ll start to hear more about projects over the next six to 12 months that were planned and are now paused or canceled. There are lots of pressures on why deals are struggling to move forward.”

Along with higher financing costs caused by the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes, lenders have tightened credit standards and are pulling back from making some loans, builders say. At the same time, financial costs are soaring and the cost of building materials, land and labor continue to rise, Sibley said.

“The labor resources are still very scarce in the market,” he said.

With single-family home construction in North Texas declining, apartment builders had hoped to see lower costs for some building materials.

“We have not seen any pullback yet,” Sibley said. “We’ve actually seen continued expansion in various elements of the construction budget.”

North Texas’ busiest apartment builder is Irving-based JPI, which recently announced plans to build 11 new D-FW communities. JPI senior vice president Miller Sylvan said putting the deals together requires more effort and time due to credit market hurdles and higher costs.

“We have not been immune to these challenges,” Sylvan said. “But fortunately, we are still able to get deals done in this environment because of our track record.

“Last year, we started 13 communities, which was a little bit over 4,300 units,” he said. “As we look to 2023, we expect to start construction on about the same number of communities with about 4,500 homes in the D-FW area.”

The rate of cost increases for apartment builders has slowed, Sylvan said, but prices are still rising.

“Over the last five years, our construction costs have grown between 75% and 80%,” he said. “Class A apartment rents have grown 40%. That leaves a gap that makes it more challenging to get deals done.”

In recent months, D-FW average apartment rents have actually seen a modest retreat from recent highs. Concessions — free rent and other perks to lure renters to new projects — are widespread.

“Cost increases have outpaced rent increases and the cost of capital has gone up,” Sylvan said.

Despite those greater challenges to building, Sylvan said demand for new apartments in North Texas continues to grow.

“There is obviously a housing shortage everywhere in D-FW — we are undersupplied in multifamily and single-family housing,” he said. “We are still seeing in-migration of folks to this area who are leasing our units. And the incomes we are seeing from our renters are continuing to go up.”

JPI is changing the mix of what it builds to include more moderately priced rental units. Many of those projects are planned as public-private partnerships with support from communities.

“We are looking at doing five or six of these communities this year in D-FW,” Sylvan said. “That will be about 1,000 units of affordable homes.”

JPI is also doing more joint ventures with investors and landowners on new projects.

Even with all the recent apartment development announcements, Sylvan expects some builders to cut back on starts.

“As capital is more picky and risk-averse, the smaller shops could have more difficult times capitalizing their deals and getting them done,” he said. “We are seeing some deals getting dropped. It does feel like we are going to see a reduction of supply.”

Michael Blackwell, senior managing director with developer Mill Creek Residential, expects the D-FW apartment project count to fall.

“When the year is up and we count the number of real starts, I think those numbers are going to be way down,” Blackwell said. “There is a remarkable volume of deals being dropped. Debt financing is a major issue.”

Mill Creek is building apartment communities in a downtown Dallas tower, on the banks of the Trinity River in West Dallas, near White Rock Lake and in west Fort Worth. The builder has another project in the works in north McKinney.

“We’ve been fortunate with our pipeline and timing,” Blackwell said.

While North Texas apartment starts are likely to drop this year, Blackwell said he thinks they will bounce back because of continued economic growth in D-FW.

“Ultimately, the mood is not going to be Chicken Little for long,” he said. “I think 2024 stands to be a pretty substantial recovery year.”

Editor’s note: This is the first in a new video series by the City of Round Rock to highlight impactful locations in the City’s history.

Along the recently-designated Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Round Rock stands a one-room church that has withstood the test of time.

St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church is not the biggest church in Round Rock, nor does it have the most congregants; however, long-time member and Round Rock resident Ella Sauls Morrison says the congregation has a “small but mighty” reputation that continues today.

The church was founded in 1885 as the first African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in Round Rock. The founding members’ names are etched in stone at the church’s entrance. While many of the families still have generations living in Round Rock today, the church has seen significant changes — including a move across Interstate 35.

Just a half century after the church’s founding, Round Rock was already beginning to grow at a rapid pace. The original location of the church, which was constructed of wood from an old barn donated by a local farmer, was at the southwest corner of RM 620 and Interstate 35, where Sprouts and McDonald’s are currently located. When Interstate 35 was built, the church had to relocate to its present location on North Sheppard Street. Sauls Morrison’s father, Otto Sauls, and his brother secured a $500 loan with Farmers State Bank to purchase the land from their sister to build the new church, and the new building was completed in June 1958.

The church today features some of the original church’s lumber, windows, lightning rods, pews, altar, pulpit and piano. The church is missing its original iron bell, which was stolen by local teenagers during the move.

The church has regularly scheduled Sunday services, prayer services and opens its doors for community meetings and prayer vigils. St. Paul A.M.E.’s mission is to “provide spiritual and religious teachings and fellowship to the community and all who enter.”

The AME church was created at the turn of the 19^th century by black parishioners from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, who had been confined to the gallery of the church during services. The church’s current pastor, the Rev. Sharian Brown-Taylor, said the congregation continues to find its roots in social action. In 2021, the congregation helped push for Sheppard Street to be designated Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and held a ceremony with the City of Round Rock to install the signs.

“The various people that attended, you didn’t see one color — you saw the community come together, and those are the things that are important and those are the things that the church should represent,” Brown-Taylor said.

One of downtown Dallas’ most-visible buildings near the Arts District has been bought by one of the city’s biggest property owners.

Jonas Woods’ Pacific Elm Properties said it has bought the 22-story St. Paul Place office tower at Ross and St. Paul in the Dallas Arts District. The purchase was financed with a $66.7 million loan from MetLife Commercial Mortgage, The Dallas Morning News reported.

“We think this is a very special boutique property on Ross and we plan to materially upgrade the lobby, common areas and amenities to reflect a class AA quality,” Woods told the Morning News. “We will definitely keep this as pure office.”

The nearly 275,000-square-foot office high-rise has been owned since 2016 by Dallas-based Quadrant Investment Properties. It was built in 1983.

The building is leased to tenants including D Magazine Partners, Mayer LLP, Haas Petroleum Engineering, Hankinson LLP, Oculus Inc., and Crowe LLP.

Quadrant Investment previously completed a multimillion-dollar makeover of the building, including a revamped ground-floor lobby and outdoor patio spaces.

Pacific Elm Properties has invested in multiple downtown properties, including Bryan Tower, Santander Tower, and 2100 Ross, and the firm is repurposing several of the office properties as mixed-use buildings with new residential units.

Pacific Elm Properties recently invested in downtown’s 60-story Comerica Bank Tower with a plan to convert it into a combination of offices, apartments, and hotel rooms.

The St. Paul Place acquisition is one of just a few Dallas-area office-building deals this year. The Morning News reported that office sales in North Texas are down more than 80% so far this year.

St. Paul Place was the birthplace of Dallas Innovates inside the D Magazine Partners offices in a collaboration with the Dallas Regional Chamber in 2016, prior to Dallas Innovates’ spin out in 2021. In 2018, we wrote about many of the properties along Ross Avenue undergoing renovations and upgrades, including St. Paul Place.

Quadrant Investment Properties, led by Chad Cook, acquired St. Paul Place in 2016 from Goddard Investment Group.

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“Bubba” — A dialectical term used in the rural southern United States as an affectionate form of address to an older brother.

After spending several days exploring the city of San Antonio, Texas, I started to feel that San Antonio reminds me a fair bit of St. Paul. It didn’t strike me so right away, but over time, the feeling established itself and then grew.

St. Paul’s history began with the establishment of a military fort on a river. So did San Antonio’s. San Antonio and St. Paul both have historic riverfronts as well as beautiful botanical conservatories and repurposed historic breweries. San Antonio feels like St. Paul’s “Bubba”; the bigger, older brother that lives down South, that kind of friendly guy that you go visit when you want a change of scenery.

As in all families, there are differences among siblings, but there are plenty of connections as well. St. Paul history buffs know that in 1841, Father Lucien Galtier renamed the scruffy river port then known as Pig’s Eye Landing to the more genteel sounding St. Paul after his favorite saint. San Antonio was also named by a priest, and as far as I can tell, these are the two largest American cities named by Catholic priests.

Of course, Antonio is a fair bit older than Paul (136 years to be exact) as the first Spanish explorers arrived in the area in 1691. Domingo Teran de los Rios, the leader of a Spanish expedition, came upon a small river and called it San Antonio because it was discovered on June 13, the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua. The town of San Antonio itself was not founded until 1718, when Franciscan missionary Antonio Olivares established a mission and the first presidio, or military base, on the river’s banks.

THE RIVER WALK

One of the best ways to see the city is to follow the trace of the San Antonio River, the watery line that connects many of the major downtown tourist attractions. By Minnesota standards, the river is miniscule, spanning a few dozen feet at most as it courses slowly through the city. But size isn’t everything. Unlike St. Paul’s focus on the river as a transportation corridor, Bubba’s river generates huge commercial revenues solely as an entertainment venue.

The area most visited by tourists in San Antonio is the slightly below-grade downtown area along the banks of the river. Known as the River Walk, it’s a beautifully landscaped public park known worldwide for its bucolic beauty by day and engaging energy at night. The walk itself hides among the tall hotels concentrated in this section of downtown. Indeed, it sometimes takes a bit of looking to find the path down. But once you’re there, about five miles of winding and twisting trails stretch out, lined with restaurants, museums, galleries, bars and shops.

Could St. Paul learn a bit from Bubba about making our own waterfront attractive? At St. Paul City Hall, city planners have a project called the River Balcony on the drawing table. Perhaps someday, St. Paul’s riverfront will have its own new brand of beauty and history and be a place of bustling tourism and entertainment. Toward that end, we could do well to consider San Antonio as a model.

MUSEUM REACH

San Antonio officials knew a good thing when they saw the river, and over time, the River Walk has expanded. The Museum Reach district now follows the San Antonio River north from the center city. Completed about seven years ago, this mile-plus extension has a far different character from the core from which it sprang: It’s more cultured and more serene. This newer section features works of art, landscapes terraformed with native Texas plants and access to a district full of world-class attractions.

Many cities have defunct old breweries they can’t bear to tear down because they are too important, architecturally and historically, to the city’s identity. In St. Paul, we’ve got Schmidt and Hamm’s. In Minneapolis, there’s Grain Belt. And in San Antonio, they’ve got Pearl.

The resurrection of the Pearl Brewery along the Museum Reach is an example of a brewery revitalization that has gone well. Once derelict, it’s now a hip and on-the-rise area, teeming with restaurants, shops, bars and other entertainments. On the day I visited, the place was buzzing with a food festival devoted to a simple but much beloved local specialty: the tamal.

TEXAS TAMALES

Many Americans love Mexican foods, but the tamal is an often overlooked treat that has become my new favorite. It’s generally not on the menu at fast-food chain restaurants because it’s hard to make good tamales. Freshness is important, and tamales take time and expertise to prepare properly.

Tamales are likely the most beloved food in all of San Antonio. Sure, they are a humble sort of foodstuff, merely a mixture of corn dough (called masa) and lard folded over refried beans or pork and steamed. But when a tamal is made correctly, there is no comfort food as satisfying. By the way, San Antonians may gently let you know that the singular form of tamales is “tamal.” If you want just one, “tamale” is incorrect.

Bubba’s residents love tamales year-round, but it’s during Christmas season that they take center stage. The timing of my visit in early December was perfect. The city was gearing up for its annual tamales eating season. Tamales are to the Hispanic people of San Antonio at Christmas what latkes are to Jewish people on Hannukah. Families often get together for a tamales-making party known as a tamalada in early December and crank out hundreds and hundreds of tamales to give as gifts to family and friends.

I visited the Tamales Holiday Festival, which is held each year in December in the Pearl District. When the weather is good, tens of thousands of tamales lovers show up. And who wouldn’t enjoy a celebration of such delicious southern comfort food? For just $5 you can get six chicken, pork or bean tamales, the masa shell steamed to perfection in corn husks, the filling redolent with garlic, cumin and other spices. For foodies seeking something more adventurous and less traditional, the tamale makers offer specialties such as banana leaf-wrapped tamales filled with chicken and mole sauce, or sweet dessert-style tamales filled with cinnamon, fruit and pecans.

A TEXAS-SIZED GARDEN

A few hundred yards up and downriver from the Pearl brewery, the paved and landscaped banks of the San Antonio River border numerous interesting visitor spots. From the Alamo to the San Antonio Zoo to the Witte Natural History museum, there are more places to visit in this area alone than a short vacation would allow. Two stood out as being particularly noteworthy: the city Botanical Gardens and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

The 38-acre Botanical Garden features formal plantings, a children’s garden, water features and a trail planted with native Texas flora. All of those gardens are interesting, but the thing that sets this place apart is its futuristic conservatory building. The architecture is much different from that of the McNeely Conservatory at Como Park or any other conservatory in the United States for that matter.

The building’s designer, Emilio Ambasz of Argentina, was once the curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the conservatory’s architecture evokes a number of modernistic influences. Ambasz took full advantage of San Antonio’s mild climate by eschewing the typical hallway connections between conservatory rooms. Instead, he connected the conservatory’s five pavilions together using a verdant outdoor courtyard filled with green arcades that protect visitors from sun and to a lesser extent, rain.

This arrangement provides the conservatory an opportunity to use its vertical space in unique ways. Some of the plant areas, such as the fern room, are subterranean, cut 20 feet down into the earth, while others, such as the palm pavilion, soar six stories up. The whole idea, said the New York Times when the building opened, is that this place is meant to be a poetic essay on the relationship between manmade and natural structures.

WORLD CLASS ART

San Antonio’s warm climate means that most visitor attractions are built with fair weather in mind. But what does one do when the weather is lousy? One excellent option is the San Antonio Museum of Art. It is often overlooked because of competition with SeaWorld, Six Flags, the River Walk and other well-advertised outdoor venues. Encountering a day full of rain, I happened upon one of the most underrated art museums in the country.

It’s a large, bright place, and unlike most art museums, there’s nary a guard around, at least that can be readily seen. While I’m certain they don’t allow any touching of the artworks, it’s a far more laid-back place than any other museum I’ve walked through.

The museum has a fine assembly of American paintings and sculptures, including works by Gilbert Stuart, Albert Bierstadt and John Singer Sargent. But the place hangs its hat upon its outstanding ancient Mediterranean art collection as well as a world-class display of Latin American works.

The collection from Egypt, Greece and Rome is vast and attractively displayed. There’s more ancient and well interpreted Greek amphorae and Roman statuary than you can shake an Egyptian mummy’s hand at. When Classical world fatigue sets in, you can move on to something completely different, an expansive display of Latin American art divided into pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, Contemporary and Folk Art galleries. The four galleries include works that span 4,000 years and contain paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and other objects from Mexico, Central America and South America.

No matter what the weather is, or what time of year it is, San Antonio is a good bet for an active vacation. It’s easy to get to by air with many direct and connecting flights from the Twin Cities. If you go, say “hey” to Bubba and dream a little about St. Paul’s future riverfront.