In a case of life imitating art—or at least imitating television—billionaire Mark Cuban is having a Schitt’s Creek moment and purchased an entire, mostly empty Texas town.
The businessman and owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise the whole town of Mustang, Texas, about 55 miles south of Dallas, through a company under his control, according to property records.
“I don’t know what if anything I will do with it,” he told the Dallas Morning News, which reported the sale, telling the paper he made the buy for a friend.
The town, first built in the 1970s, previously belonged to attorney Marty Price, a friend of Cuban’s and a dedicated Mavericks fan with floor seats, who became ill and eventually died in August.
The 77-acre town has a population of just 23 people, according to census records, and had previously been offered on sale for $4 million in 2017, but no buyers were ever found. The settlement has little more than a rundown strip club and a volunteer fire department.
“I had a fair amount of interest in it, but it was priced too high — even when we brought it down to $2 million,” Dallas real estate broker Mike Turner told the News. “The old strip club is not in good repair, but it could be redone for something…There is a resident alligator in one of the ponds.”
Mustang had been best known as a place to buy alcohol in a largely dry county, as well as for a 2008 murder in which a clubgoer was beaten to death that made headlines across the state. "We’re excited to have him as our neighbor and we’re excited about the growth and the potential it has," Jerry Newsom, head of the fire department, told NBC Dallas.
Cuban has not announced any concrete plans for what he will do with his new town, though it seems internet users have gotten ahead of him with the redevelopment plans, temporarily renaming the club “Mark Cubaret” on Google Maps.
Billionaires including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have partially relocated to Texas in recent years, using the state, its ample space and light regulations to develop their endeavours in space travel.
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