County, OHH, OISD OK Crombie’s Olney block bid

County Commissioners, Olney Hamilton Hospital, and school trustees cleared the way for Olney’s new housing surge by approving the sale of 10 foreclosed lots to a Jacksboro developer seeking to build homes in the northeast corner of town. The Commissioners, the hospital, and the Olney Independent School District Board of Trustees had to approve the $52,000 sale of the lots, some of which had been on the City’s foreclosure rolls for more than a decade, because of the back taxes owed them. The buyer is Crombie Properties of Olney LLC, owned by Kara Crombie of Jacksboro. Mrs. Crombie has rehabbed homes and historic buildings in Jacksboro.

Mayor Pro Tem Tom Parker and City Administrator Arpegea Pagsuberon attended the Commissioners’ April 24 meeting to personally request approval for the sale so that the construction process can get underway. “They are helping us bring life back into a section of town … where there has been no building,” Mr. Parker told the Commissioners. “Trailer houses have moved in and we’ve previously put a moratorium on that, trying to go back to a stick-built community and try to bring more of that in.”

The infrastructure in that part of town “has failed to the point where we will need some new sewer lines done and things like that and that’s why we grouped it like that, we put it into one area of town,” Mr. Parker said.

Crombie Properties’ bid on the block of lots covers all back taxes and costs owed to the City of Olney and Young County, he said. “The cost associated with these lots is covered in the bid so there is no cost to the city or county,” he said.

County Judge Win Graham asked whether the City has set rules on how quickly builders have to begin construction. Mrs. Pagsuberon said the City requires builders to begin building within a year of completing the purchase of a lot.

“All these [lot] purchases moving forward [have] a revisionary clause that if they don’t complete the projects or have marked improvement on the lots it comes back to the city and then we start this process all over again,” she said. “It’s really so it doesn’t sit there and grow up again and two, three years from now we’re back in the same square,” she said. If builders show progress and “just need more time because of supply chain or finances we can work with them.”

Mr. Parker said Crombie Properties and Olney’s other builders, Lance and Corey Groves who are building homes for the TV show “Rural Route Revival,” aim to have their first homes completed within six months to a year.