‘Negotiations are over’: Fairfield Lake State Park will close to public in two weeks
UPDATE: A Texas lawmaker is now seeking eminent domain to block the private development of Fairfield Lake State Park. Read the latest here.
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For weeks, Texas state officials have held out hope that they could find a way to keep the nearly 50-year-old Fairfield Lake State Park open to the public even after a private developer moved forward with the purchase of the leased land.
But now, the developer has sent an official lease termination notice to the state. The park will close to the public on Feb. 28.
The notice itself is relatively brief and formal. However, Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission chairman Arch “Beaver” Aplin III said the developer — Dallas-based firm Todd Interests — indicated to him that there is no more room for discussion about the park land.
“They told me that negotiations are over, they’re moving forward,” said Aplin, who is the founder of Buc-ee’s. “I think the Todd group’s resolute on closing the park and going on with their development.”
Todd Interests, which has not responded to repeated requests for comment over the past few weeks, plans to develop the property into a gated community of multimillion-dollar homes and potentially a private golf course, the Star-Telegram reported last week.
Fairfield Lake State Park is an 1,800-acre park in Freestone County, in between the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and the city of Houston. While it’s been open to the public since 1976, the state doesn’t own the land. Instead, it leases the land from current owner Vistra Corp., which operated a power plant nearby under subsidiary Luminant.
But, after shuttering the power plant in 2018, Vistra placed a 5,000-acre tract — including the state park land — up for sale for $110 million. Officials with Texas Parks and Wildlife have repeatedly said that the state didn’t initially have enough money to purchase the full 5,000 acres, and Vistra was uninterested in selling just a piece of the land.
So, in the absence of state action to purchase the property, Vistra agreed to sell the massive property to Todd Interests.
At that point, state officials, including Aplin, still hoped that some type of deal could be reached. Local residents also hoped for a different resolution, and worried about not only the history and beauty of the land, but also the dollars that park visitors bring into the small town of Fairfield.
When the Star-Telegram first reported the potential sale in late January, Aplin said the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department was prepared to purchase the entire 5,000 acres. He hoped that Todd Interests could be persuaded to step aside, so that the park land and the adjoining lake could remain open to the public.
By Tuesday, one day after receiving an official lease termination letter, Aplin’s thoughts had turned instead to the practicalities of closing down a park that saw more than 80,000 visitors in 2022. That will include reassigning and relocating park staff, shuttering buildings and removing equipment and vehicles.
“We got a lot of work to do, and so this is gonna happen fast,” Aplin said. “We can’t wait.”
The lease termination provides 120-day notice to the state, Aplin said, meaning the park operations will have to be fully wrapped up by mid-June. But, because of the logistics to manage, the park will close to the public at the end of February, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Stephanie Garcia.
The private parties labeled Monday’s lease termination notice as “confidential.” But Aplin said he wasn’t keeping the notice confidential because Vistra and Todd Interests have no authority to enforce the confidentiality, and because it’s a matter of public interest.
“Obviously, I’m not gonna follow that edict that they gave us,” Aplin said. “My position on this is, ‘Whatever, this is a state park, I’m not keeping this a secret.’”
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department also posted the termination notice in full online.
In a news release Tuesday afternoon, parks officials and state legislators mourned the loss of the park. Several also urged some type of continued action.
“Texas cannot lose a state park to development,” said state Sen. Charles Perry — a Republican from Lubbock and the chairman of the Senate’s Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee — in the release. “The park cannot be replaced. ... We must make every effort possible to keep the land as a state park.”
It’s unclear what action could be taken at this point to keep the park open to the public.
This story has been updated to include information from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s news release.
This story was originally published February 14, 2023 at 3:23 PM.
