City targets gas station again
The City Council directed Olney code enforcement to move to tear down an abandoned gas station on Main Street that has been an eyesore, a public health hazard, and a bureaucratic nightmare for a half decade.
The City placed a $38,000 lien on the former gas station at 301 W. Main Street last July, after the owners of the property, Houston-based GFF Texas Holdings, failed to repay the City for the cost of removing and disposing of about 5,000 illegally discarded tires in 2023.
GTT Texas Holdings placed the property up for sale last summer for $89,900 but later removed it from the listings. Olney Police Chief Dan Birbeck told the Council that code enforcement officers had been unable to contact the owners to remediate the property’s code violations, including the removal of two underground gas tanks.
“She has never responded,” he said. “It’s a tax write-off for her.”
The Young County Appraisal District gives the assessed value of the gas station property as $40,430 and shows property taxes owing every year since 2012, an approximate total of nearly $32,000.
The City’s lien is enforceable only after the property is sold, Chief Birbeck said.
The Council directed Chief Birbeck to renew enforcement action against the property.
The Council’s directive is the latest chapter in a yearslong code enforcement saga on the gas station next to First Baptist Church of Olney.
GFF originally bought the gas station in December 2022 at a county foreclosure sale for $17,000 and agreed to pay an additional $23,000 in back taxes and to remove two giant piles of illegally dumped tires and to remediate two underground tanks.
The former owners of the gas station, Rosana Cruz Corwin and Mark Brandon Corwin of Graham, pleaded guilty to illegal dumping of the tires and were fined $500 each, while the property was foreclosed on for their failure to pay property taxes.
The City Council wrestled with whether to take ownership of the gas station due to the potential liability from the underground tanks but did not want to lose a $41,000 state grant the City won in 2022 to remove the tires.
The Council decided to keep the property after obtaining a variance from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that allowed it to leave the tanks in the ground.
GFF’s purchase of the property stunned the City Council in 2022 after multiple unsuccessful attempts to auction the foreclosed property. City Administrator Simon Dwyer said he would check to see whether the TCEQ’s variance is still in effect should the City take ownership of the property, and if the tanks must be removed