The old Port Arthur News building in downtown Port Arthur may have a new lease on life.

The Port Arthur Economic Development Corp. is applying for a $2.4 million grant from the Economic Development Administration to transform the building into a small business office space/city of Port Arthur office space. It is estimated the project would cost $3 million with some matching funds from the city.

“Port Arthur was hit heavily by the storm (Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey). The EDA has much grant money ($600 million). We can convert the Port Arthur News building into a small business incubator and for municipal use,” said Floyd Batiste, executive director of the PAEDC. “It’s a beautiful location across from the park (Martin J. “Popeye” Holmes Park). We can convert it into a modern-looking building. More people downtown can bring in more private investment.”

Some possibilities are the city having an emergency management center, the Small Business Development Center being housed in the new building and second-year business students from Lamar State College Port Arthur serving as interns with the chance small businesses may hire them.

“There’s a need for small office spaces and shared resources downtown. Businesses want to keep their overhead low,” he said.

Batiste said he feels the grant will come through.

In other PAEDC business, the board of directors denied a $350,000 economic incentive for infrastructure for Joe’s Shopping Plaza to build on Jimmy Johnson Boulevard adjacent to Babe Zaharias Golf Course. The plaza would be an 8,000 square foot retail space.

Batiste said some of the newer members on the board didn’t understand the incentive for infrastructure.

“They see a lot of vacant spaces in the city and they ask themselves, why build more instead of rehabilitating these places,” he said. “But at the same time, you can’t tell investors where to invest money. It was done due to a lack of knowledge.”

Batiste will ask that the item be placed on the agenda at next month’s meeting.

“We live on sales tax. When someone moves, it creates a blighted area,” he said. “I explained it to the board. On Anchor Drive we built the infrastructure and the road in front of the hospital for retail development.”

Developer Joe Aref predicts the shopping plaza will have a 100 percent occupancy rate.

Directors also approved a drainage master plan for Jade Avenue Business Park.

Batiste wrote in a memo a master drainage plan would establish the drainage criteria for all future development within the Jade Avenue Business Park and provide guidelines to manage storm water runoff.

“In development of the drainage master plan for the 141-acre site will go beyond a study of available records to include field data collection, inventory of systems serving the vicinity and development of drainage criteria for the Jade Avenue Business Park,” it read.

He said it’s in the best interest to ensure the water doesn’t stay in the area so there will be no future flooding.