JACKSONVILLE, Texas — Across East Texas, there are many vacant buildings, many of which have been abandoned and forgotten.
If you travel through the city of Jacksonville, you probably have seen a three-story concrete building on East Loop 456, and in case you didn't know, that used to be the Travis Clinic.
In 1972, Travis Clinic moved into the building. For more than a decade, it has sat on the 45-acre land and has not been maintained.
"It breaks my heart to see it in the condition it's in," former Travis Clinic Administrator Gerry Burks said.
Burks was the administrator and business manager at Travis Clinic from 1972 to 1980.
"It was one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen," Burks said. "This building was built in the early 70's."
When the clinic first opened there were 21 doctors that covered a variety of specialties. With about 50 supporting staff members, nurses and office personnel, the clinic was doing well.
"We had a wonderful patient draw from around East Texas," he said. "We had the biggest medical facility in the area at that time. It was steady as a rock. It would have made a fine storm shelter. It is concrete blocks, big blocks of precast concrete."
The large windows that are now boarded up, used to be where the clinic's lobby was located at. Walls were layered with multicolored vinyl: red, yellow, and green.
"I like bright colors and I thought it was the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen, especially for this area," Burks said.
The original plan was to expand the development in the area. That included a parking garage, a motel at the corner of the Loop and Okeeffe Road, a shopping center for businesses to rent, and a truck stop at the corner of Highway 79.
Unfortunately for the clinic, new medical facilities were being built around the area and caused them to lose patients.
As the patient visits went down, doctors began to leave one by one.
Burks believes the new clinics are the reason why doctors decided to branch out and open up their own practice.
"Ultimately, they moved on and left the building vacant," Burks said.
Mike McEwen with Cherokee Real Estate Company says the property has been listed for sale since 2012 for a man from Sugarland.
Prior to the owner, the property was owned by a Baptist missionary group out of the Beaumont area. The building was used as a meeting place for other churches of that denomination.
"They got way over their heads into the project, they were not in it very long at all, it had just sat and sat and sat, McEwen said. "My current client was kind of suckered into buying this place by a local politician who told him it was a good buy, and it really was not a good buy."
The way the owner bought the property was by paying off the church's note. Now the rock-solid three-story structure sits with poor cosmetic and mechanical conditions.
"A lot of the wiring and plumbing has been stolen out of it," McEwen said. "Got a quote of a quarter of $1 million to have the building razed because it would have to be dynamited, so it’s not going anywhere."
The building remains listed for $299,000. McEwan says there have been recent inquiries, but in the last few years, parts of the adjoining property have been sold off.
Now, plans are in the works for an upscale apartment complex and a possible truck-stop and gas station at the corner of Highway 79 and the Loop.
If you know of any other abandoned locations across the East Texas region that you would like for us to cover, send us an e-mail at news@cbs19.tv