Texico could be growing

For 27 years, Nancy Barnes has lived in the same house on the same farm with her husband and horses just north of Texico.

All that is about to change.

Nancy and Paul Barnes are waiting for county and state approval to parcel and sell 360 acres, which will be divided into dozens of 5-acre tracks for “ranchettes,” as Nancy Barnes called them.

“Everything looks good on Silver Shadows (subdivision),” Curry County Manager Dick Smith said. “I don’t think there’ll be a problem with it going through.

“From the county perspective, we think this type of expansion is a good thing. It’s just natural growth.”

Texico Mayor Pro-tem Oran Jay Autrey told the Texico City Council last week he heard there were at least five new subdivisions being planned inside the Texico School District.

Texico schools superintendent R.L. Richards said he has heard similar information. The school district has a student body of 534 but is making plans for growth.

“We don’t have all the details right now,” Richards said, “but we are planning to develop a long-range facility plan and will be submitting that to the state sometime in the summer.

“We always speculated that Texico might grow real fast.”

Although Nancy Barnes said she is sad about giving up the home she knows and loves, she looks forward to the “new adventure” and is not concerned that more people would mean more problems. She said she plans to move into the new subdivision, about 10 miles from their current home.

“The type of subdivision we have planned will enhance the community,” Nancy Barnes said. “It won’t bring in a bunch of kids who are unruly or undesirable but attract the type of people who have higher standards of schools and higher standards of everything.”

Daren Sudderth, president of JB Sudderth Realty in Farwell, said in the last five years there has been an increase of interest in country homes all around the region.

Sudderth has been selling acreage in a pair of subdivisions north of Clovis — Wilhite Estates and North Clark — for $7,000 to $8,500 per acre within the last two years. Prices vary depending on the type of land and its conditions, but it’s location that is drawing Sudderth’s clients.

“People are tired of the hustle and bustle of town, they want more freedom and more space,” he said.