The empty building at 50th and University has a story Lubbock hasn't heard

It started the way a lot of Lubbock conversations do these days, with a photo on Facebook. Someone posted a picture of the old building at 50th Street and University Avenue, the three-story one with the broken-out windows and the weeds swallowing the lot, and asked a simple question. What is the story with this place? Within a day the post had hundreds of comments. People shared memories, traded theories, and filled in pieces of the history from having lived it. Between all of them, most of the answer was already there. What was missing was the paperwork, so we spent an afternoon pulling the county and court records to put the rest of it together.

What those records show is that the building is set to be sold at a tax foreclosure auction at 10 a.m. this Tuesday, September 1, on the steps of the Lubbock County courthouse. The opening bid is $316,200. The county values the property at close to $2 million. After sitting empty for years, the corner that so many people drive past every day is about to change hands in public, to whoever shows up willing to pay for it.

There are two buildings on that corner, not one

This is the detail that shapes everything else, and the neighbors who worked there laid it out themselves in the comments. The tall, empty one you see from the intersection is 2424 50th Street, an office building that once carried the name Twenty Four Office Plaza. Behind it sits a second, larger building at 2412 50th. That one was the hospital. As more than one former employee pointed out, the building out front held doctors' offices and was never owned by the hospital behind it.

Some people in the thread called the corner haunted. It is worth saying that Lubbock has a fairly steady list of places that get talked about that way, a couple of buildings on the Texas Tech campus, an old downtown hotel, a bridge east of town, and this one has never been on it. Nobody in the thread pointed to an actual event here, and nothing turned up in the records. A building this size sitting dark with its windows out will earn that reputation on looks alone.

The owner is not the city, and not from around here

One of the most common questions in the thread was whether the City of Lubbock owns it. The county's appraisal record says it does not, and a neighbor pulled that record up in the middle of the conversation. The property, listed under parcel number R166210, belongs to a company called CBM Enterprises. Its mailing address is not in Lubbock, and not even in Texas. It is in Albuquerque, New Mexico. CBM bought the building in February 2024, the most recent name in a chain of owners that runs back to 2007, which lines up with what several longtime residents recalled.

The county took the property to court over unpaid taxes in 2024. That case produced the judgment that now has the building headed to auction.

Underneath the whole conversation was a fair frustration. People wondered why the city will fine a homeowner over tall weeds while a building this size sits and falls apart. It turns out something has been happening, just not anywhere you could see it from the road. Unless someone pays the back taxes before Tuesday morning, the building goes to the highest qualified bidder on the courthouse steps. For the everyday cases, weeds and vacant structures are handled by Lubbock code enforcement, which takes reports through the MyLBK app or at 806-775-2193.

Two bankruptcies, both dismissed

There is one more layer, and it is worth laying out plainly. Court records show that CBM Enterprises filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice this year, once in February and once in June. Both filings were dismissed within weeks because the required paperwork was never turned in. A bankruptcy can put a foreclosure on hold, but neither of these lasted long enough to do it. In the second filing, the Lubbock Central Appraisal District appeared as a creditor, the county still working to collect what it is owed. The records do not explain why the owner filed and then let the cases go. What they do show is that Tuesday's sale is still on.

That leaves the question of why the building looks so much rougher lately. We flew the property on August 24 and the damage is not subtle: windows out along the back, weeds well past knee height, the lot empty. Several neighbors who pass it every day said the windows were broken out and the front door was pulled off within just the last couple of weeks. There is no police report in hand to confirm it, so it stands as what it is, the word of people who watch that corner closely. It fits the timeline, too. A building that was still being advertised for lease a year ago is now empty and bound for a tax sale. And those orange barrels in the photo that got passed around are road construction at the intersection, not part of this story.

For now, the corner finally has something it never had before. A date. On Tuesday morning, one of the most talked-about buildings in Lubbock will belong to whoever wants it enough to bid. However it turns out, it is worth remembering how we got here. One neighbor asked a simple question online, a few hundred people who care what their city looks like answered it, and the records filled in the rest.