Citizens State Bank took action last week and tore down the last of what were four buildings behind the downtown Sealy bank after deteriorating conditions inside the building were worsening.

Ryan Svoboda, CFO of Citizens, said the building hadn’t been used in any bank capacity in years but went through asbestos abatement in 2013 when three adjoining buildings were taken down in favor of the parking lot. It was most recently used as a haunted house for the 2018 Boo Bash celebration but soon the problems outweighed the cost to repair them.

“It was more rotting out on the inside, unusable, kind of a safety hazard, so the liability and safety issues would have made it impossible to just save that mural wall. The first major wind event would probably have collapsed that building, but it was pretty much cleaned out on the inside,” Svoboda said last Friday. “The roof was caving in, we’ve had some estimates on trying to repair it, but the cost in doing that just didn’t make sense to do what they wanted to do.”

The building had become an attraction of sorts after a mural depicting parts of Sealy’s history was painted on one of the sides in 2015 but Svoboda didn’t rule out a return of the mural to a new building.

“That was a Main Street tackling on that project and I think that was about five or six years ago, and (then-Sealy Main Street Manager Toni Franklin) had asked the bank permission to do it,” Svoboda said. “To say that it won’t be on the new building or to say it won’t be on an existing building in the downtown area, who knows?”

The front page of the Aug. 27, 2015, edition of The Sealy News showed artist George Bevill of Brazos Country putting the finishing touches on the mural that featured Stephen F. Austin, cattle drives, cotton farming, wagon trains and the railroad, among other things that helped shape the community over the last nearly two centuries.

Now, six years later, Svoboda said the plan will be for another bank building to be constructed on the slab in what is now a parking lot but until then, he had visions of downtown events using the area.

“The existing slab will still be there, which is above the grade of the current asphalt parking lot and would not be usable for parking,” Svoboda said. “I could see market days or the downtown vendor blender event or something like that setting up on the building slab for downtown events. I just told (Main Street Manager Chelsea Humes) I just ask that Main Street or the City of Sealy ask permission to use it before an event was to occur. … The longerterm plan is to have a beautiful, brand-new building in its place, but with building characteristics, such as roof design and overall design style to match other buildings in the downtown district area.”

Svoboda said the bank looked into dealing with the issue in 2019 then was forced to hit pause when the coronavirus pandemic started in 2020. After waiting for construction costs to come down, Svoboda said the decision was made to finish the job before the end of this year.