Advertisement
This is member-exclusive content
icon/ui/info filled

newsTexas

Texas offered $95M for Fairfield Lake land in move developer calls ‘sabotage’

The Texas attorney general’s office has said the state will get Fairfield Lake State Park “by any and all legally available means.”

Letters between key players in the Fairfield Lake State Park saga obtained by The Dallas Morning News detail the power struggle over 5,000 acres in rural Freestone County, including a recent attempt by state park officials to purchase the land for $95 million.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department made the multimillion-dollar offer in a letter dated June 1 to landowner Vistra Energy. The letter — which included a promise to close on the deal by the end of July when funds were in order — was signed by TPWD Commission Chairman Arch Aplin III, who is also the CEO of Buc-ee’s.

Privately owned Vistra Energy has leased the land to the state at no cost since 1971. It listed the land, which includes the 2,400-acre state park, for sale in 2021 with an asking price of $110 million. Dallas-based developer Todd Interests had the land under contract for close to a year, and the contract closed June 1.

Advertisement
Breaking News

Get the latest breaking news from North Texas and beyond.

Or with:

The state’s lease ends June 13, and the park closed to the public on Sunday.

Todd Interests has already planned a $1 billion project to create an exclusive luxury community on the land with multimillion-dollar homes and a golf course.

Advertisement

Prior to this letter, TPWD had offered Todd Interests $25 million to give up its contract. State officials said they “took persistent and extraordinary steps to negotiate” while the developer has told The News it responded in good faith to the offer but never heard back.

A week before the state’s offer to Vistra, the attorney general’s office sent a letter to Todd Interests saying it represented TPWD and hoped the state and developer could reach a deal.

“However, should that not be achievable, please take notice that TPWD intends to acquire the property, including but not limited to Fairfield Lake State Park, by any and all legally available means,” the letter says, adding that Todd Interests should preserve all documents it has related to the land deal.

Advertisement

A special-called meeting between parks commissioners, including Aplin, is slated for Saturday morning with the intent to discuss options for “saving” the park, including condemnation, TPWD has said. State lawmakers have previously discussed using eminent domain to obtain the land.

The managing partners at Todd Interests have stood firm that they intend to close on the contract and move forward with their development plans, which they reiterated in a Tuesday letter to the parks department.

The state’s lease for Fairfield Lake State Park ends June 13, and the park closed to the...
The state’s lease for Fairfield Lake State Park ends June 13, and the park closed to the public on June 4. (Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)

Todd Interests accused the parks officials of “sabotage” and attempting to interfere with their legal sale, saying: “The State of Texas, however, has spent the last eight months working to derail our transaction and diminish our transactional rights.”

They also wrote Tuesday that they assumed the letter from the AG’s office was “purely an effort of intimidation as it contains nothing of legal substance — simply theatrics for the media in an effort to interfere with our lawful contract.”

The developer asked again that the state respect its private property rights.

“We have fulfilled our duty as Texans by engaging in good faith efforts with TPWD since the day we first met,” the letter says. “We now ask the TPWD Commission to respect our rights as we fulfill our duty to our financial partners and family.”

Advertisement
Related Stories
View More