How Village Green Began: A Cemetery, a Crisis, and 40 Years of Commitment

Every business has an origin story. Most of them involve hard work, some luck, and at least one moment where the whole thing could have gone sideways. Ours involves a framing company, a wooded lot in Denison, a collapsed oil market — and a cemetery that nobody knew was there.

From Picture Frames to House Frames

Before Village Green Custom Homes, I owned a retail shop in Denison called Frame Et Cetera — a picture framing store with a gift section. It had nothing to do with construction. But when I made the decision to close that business, I made an equally decisive pivot: I was going to build houses.

In 1982, I purchased a four-acre tract in Denison, Texas — a piece of land that backed up to a heavily wooded area. The plan was straightforward: build townhomes, sell them, and establish a name in the Grayson County market. I called the project Village Green Townhomes, and that name became the foundation of everything that followed.

The Oil Collapse and a Market That Stopped Moving

By late 1983, the first townhomes were ready to sell. The timing could not have been worse. The collapse of the oil industry had rippled through the Texas economy and brought residential construction nearly to a halt. Very few homes were being built anywhere in the region, and buyers were scarce. The market that had looked promising in 1982 had fundamentally changed.

I was becoming genuinely concerned about the project. I had land, I had finished units, and I had very few buyers. That kind of pressure tests what you're made of as a builder and as a businessman.

The Cemetery Nobody Expected

Then came the discovery that made an already difficult situation considerably more complicated.

An older gentleman in Denison — a Mr. Donahue — decided to spend his time clearing out the underbrush in the wooded area to the south of the property. As the brush came down, what emerged was the old Clark Cemetery. Headstones, some with inscriptions and some without, spread across the cleared ground just beyond the southern boundary of my development.

I walked through it myself, reading the stones. It was a genuine piece of Denison history — quiet, unexpected, and sitting right next to the townhomes I was trying to sell. Mr. Donahue, in his own tribute to the site, built a series of crosses and painted them white. They stood clearly visible from the property.

My immediate thought, as any builder's would be, was: How am I going to sell these homes next to a cemetery? In a market that was already struggling, this felt like one obstacle too many.

Commitment Over Circumstance

What got Village Green through that period wasn't a market recovery or a lucky break. It was the decision to stay committed to the work and the quality of what we were building, regardless of the external conditions. The oil collapse, the slow market, the cemetery next door — none of those things changed what the townhomes were. They were well-built, on a good piece of land, in a city with a real history.

Village Green Townhomes sold. The project found its buyers. And more than four decades later, those townhomes are still standing in Denison — likely looking better than the day they were completed, because the landscape has had forty years to mature around them.

That first project set the standard for everything that followed: build it right, stand behind it, and don't let short-term pressure compromise long-term quality. That's still how we operate today — on every custom home and every renovation we take on across Grayson County, Sherman, Pottsboro, Lake Texoma, and the broader Texoma region.

Frequently Asked Questions

James Green

Owner & Master Builder · Village Green of Denison, Inc. · Grayson County, TX since 1982