Sunbelt Savings Buys Land in Floodplain
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 31, 1990
By SANDRA BAKER
ARLINGTON - Nearly 2,000 acres of undeveloped land in the Trinity River flood plain once considered as a possible location for a new Texas Rangers baseball stadium has been foreclosed on by its lender.
The trustee of the property sold it back to Sunbelt Savings of Irving on Dec. 4 for $10.3 million, according to county deed records.
The property had been owned by Meridian Service Corp., a subsidiary of Meridian Savings Association, which has been in receivership with the Resolution Trust Corp. since April 1989.
Sunbelt Savings had a $100 million lien on the property, and the land could not be sold by federal regulators until it was free of any liens.
The property is bounded along the river to the north, Farm Road 157 to the east, Texas 360 to the west and Green Oaks Boulevard to the south.
Rick Michaels, executive vice president at Sunbelt, said last week that the Land Management Department with the financial institution soon will begin developing a marketing plan that will go out to real estate brokers to help sell the property.
Bank officials also will work with land planners to review various sale options, including dividing the land into several parcels, Michaels said.
The value of the land still needs to be determined, and that could take some time, he said. "We haven't finished our internal review," he said.
Michaels said selling the property will be difficult because the parcel is too large for today's market. Normally, that amount of acreage would be sold to developers, but he said there is no appetite in today's real estate market for that much land.
The land was once the target in separate bids of Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush, who considered the site for a baseball stadium, and Fort Worth investor Richard Rainwater.
In July, the RTC said the agency had received at least five offers on the property. In addition to Rainwater and Bush, a third bid was made by Dallas real estate developer Preston Carter and a Maryland group for a possible horse racing track.