Work begins on first of three new planned houses in Breckenridge
By Carla McKeown/Breckenridge Texan
The weather in Breckenridge didn’t really make a good impression when Greg and Stacy Akers moved to town earlier this year, but they’ve decided to stay anyway and started work last week on the first of two new houses to be built in the 400 block of Ridge Road.
The day they moved to Breckenridge was the day of the ice storm in February.
“We got into town, we’d gone to Walmart and got some stuff…got our beds off the moving trailer, and then (the ice storm) just started, so (my wife’s) first three days here were with no power,” said Greg Akers, a partner with Pintex Development. “Luckily I have great neighbors, because I didn’t even have any firewood.”
As soon as they got thawed out and settled in, they went to work on their plans to build at least three new houses in Breckenridge: the two on Ridge Road and a third house which is planned for East Williams Street. They hope to have the first of the three new houses finished in 90 days, weather permitting.
Akers said that when he and his wife decided to move to Breckenridge from California, they found the housing market very limited and the options for new houses almost non-existent. He said the last new houses in town were built by Lisa and David Stowe, owners of Caddo Creek Investments, which were completed about a year ago.
The first house to be built by Akers and Pintex Development, at 402 Ridge Road, will be about 1,500 square feet, he said, and the second one, at 400 Ridge Road, will be a little bigger.
The house currently on the East Williams Street property will be torn down, and Akers said he plans to build a new home that’s about 1,000 square feet there. The houses will all be three bedroom-two bath homes.
The two lots on Ridge Road were purchased from Tommy Wimberley. “He’s been a wealth of knowledge,.” Akers said about Wimberley. “He’s helped me quite a bit to try to figure out how to navigate everything…who to talk to…”
Soon after coming to Breckenridge, Akers was put in touch with the Breckenridge Economic Development Corporation and worked first with Virgil Moore and now Colton Buckley.
The BEDC offers incentives to those who are working to help improve the community by tearing down some of the old buildings in Breckenridge. For example, the City of Breckenridge recently took bids on four properties in town with the requirement that the existing structures be demolished and cleaned off within six months. Buckley said the BEDC can provide an incentive of 50 percent of such a demolition project, up to $5,000, for plans that include building a new structure within 24 months. Additionally, the BEDC can pay up to 25 percent of the costs of demolition, if a new structure is not going to be built within two years. There are also incentives for new home construction.
Part of the building business is keeping a close eye on the costs of materials, and at this time, Akers said, the cost of lumber is going back down to more affordable prices.
“We watch all those things to try to keep the cost down, because really the goal of this was to build a house that can be afforded by the masses of Breckenridge, not build another big house like I’ve seen so many build outside the city limits,” Akers said. “Our goal is to keep these priced where, you know, anybody in Breckenridge, the average person in Breckenridge, can afford it.”
Akers said he hopes the bid winners on the recent property sale will take advantage of the incentives and build more new homes in Breckenridge.
Buckley said the same thing. “We want to build that strong middle class housing market that we desperately need here,” Buckley said.
Akers, who grew up in Hanford, California, first moved to Texas about 30 years ago. He moved back to California, but he and his wife decided to look for a small community to raise their young grandson in. They looked at Weatherford, where Akers had lived before, but saw that it has become too much a part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for their liking. He was familiar with Breckenridge from previous hunting trips.
The low cost of living and Hubbard Creek Lake attracted them to this area, but it may be the people who keep them here. “It’s such an inviting area, and the people…you don’t know a stranger in this town,” he said. “I have not met one rude person in this entire town in almost six months, and I’m everywhere, every day.”
Cutline, top photo: Work began last week on a new house being built on Ridge Road. Pictured are, from left, Russell Haskell of Weatherford with Pintex Development; Colton Buckley, CEO and Executive Director of the Breckenridge Development Corporation; Johnny Smith of Weatherford, project manager; and Greg Akers of Breckenridge with Pintex Development. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)
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