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Billionaires have plenty of money to throw at pet projects. This year, we watched big spenders Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson launch rockets into space. In fact, 2021 became somewhat of a rich man’s space race between these billionaires.
However, fellow billionaire and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban decided to keep his feet (and funds) firmly on the ground with his latest purchase. Cuban just bought an entire town in Texas.
Mustang, Texas, originally went up for sale back in 2017 for $4 million. That actually sounds reasonable for a a whole town, doesn’t it?
Buying a town might sound like a page lifted from the script of “Schitt’s Creek,” but Cuban’s reason for buying the small town was simple: a friend needed to sell it.
The town’s previous principal owner, Marty Price, was a basketball fan with floor seats for the Mavericks. Price wanted to sell Mustang after he fell ill, and he died in August. Cuban told NBC News he bought the town to help out Price.
What does someone do with his own town? Cuban told the Dallas Morning News he’s not sure just yet.
“I don’t know what, if anything, I will do with it,” he told the paper.
According to CNN, Cuban’s latest investment isn’t exactly a major metropolis. Mustang covers about 77 acres of property in Navarro County.
There are some conflicting reports about the current population of Mustang. The U.S. Census website reported that no one officially lived in the town of the 2020 decennial census. But according to numerous media reports, including Fox Business News, about 20 people live in a trailer park in the place declared “the smallest town in Texas” back in 2010, based on census data from the previous decade.
Mustang sits a little more than 45 miles south of Dallas and was known for being the only town in an otherwise dry county where alcohol was allowed when it was founded in the 1970s.
Entrepreneur reported Mustang has an abandoned strip club where a man was murdered in 2018, and there is a “resident alligator” in the town pond.
The original listing price back in 2017 was $4 million, but the price Cuban paid hasn’t been released to the public as yet. Mike Turner, president of the Dallas real estate firm J. Elmer Turner, confirmed the sale to Cuban but did not disclose the final price to NBC News, saying only it sold “for less the original asking price.”
“Mark Cuban stepped up, and it was a natural for him to buy it,” Turner told NBC News. “With his resources and imagination, I’m sure there are endless possibilities.”
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