It’s no secret that the former Texas Gas building has seen better days. But after a two-year asbestos removal project that’s cost more than $2 million, Gulfstream Commercial Services officials said they are in the final phase of asbestos remediation, and that the property will soon offer a “blank slate of opportunities” for a number of businesses.
Gulfstream Chief Operating Officer Ed Ray said one of the major reasons nobody had done anything with the Texas Gas facility was because a “significant amount of asbestos” had taken over each of the building’s four floors.
However, he said Gulfstream has been able to fully remediate the asbestos on floors 2-4 and is in the last stage of the process.
“We couldn’t be more excited,” Ray said, adding that developers were finally seeing a “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Ray said Gulfstream had been working diligently over the last 15 months to collect and salvage as many recyclable materials from the facility as possible.
“We’ve got a tremendous amount of recyclables out of the building,” he said.
Removing the asbestos has been a time-consuming process, and the development company even built its own containment beneath the building to collect the material.
The Division of Air Quality recently visited the property and said things were on the right track, and Ray said the interior of the building is looking better for future business opportunities every day.
Already, a few businesses — Ollie Car Wash, Azzip Pizza and Klutch Barber Shop — have opened on the property in front of the former Texas Gas building. Additionally, the Jerry Ray Davis auto dealership currently located in downtown Owensboro has broken ground on the construction of a new state-of-the-art facility on the former Texas Gas campus.
While the campus offers its own development options, Ray said the building itself also contains a versatile range of opportunities.
“It has a multitude of potential uses,” he said. “It could be used for anything from an office building, to condominiums, to apartments, to retail. Now that we’ve finally peeled back the layers and have seen it’s potential, the possibilities are very promising.”
