Growing up my dad and his buddies would always have poker night in the basement that included cards, cigars, and liquor concoctions.  I used to sneak down the stairs to spy on them and was always intrigued by the deck of playing cards.  One night my dad told his buddies that a deck of cards is based on a calendar.  Fifty-two (52) cards represent fifty-two (52) weeks in a year and the card colors red and black symbolize night and day.  The four (4) suits represent the four (4) seasons. There are thirteen (13) cards in a suit to match the number of lunar cycles and twelve (12) court cards that represent the 12 months of the year.  A standard deck of cards has four suits: hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds and the original card suits were based on classes and can be traced back to France in the 1400s.  Suits include spades ♠ (royalty), clubs ♣ (peasants),  hearts ♥ (clergy), and diamonds ♦ (merchants). 

Once the night was over I would gather up all the cards and the next day I loved to try and build a house out of the cards. Then my brother would come by like a gust of wind and knock it over which always upset me, but I started over each time. House of cards is a metaphor for the instability of the inner workings of what appears to be the perfect partnership, structure, plan, institution, or organization.  In a house of cards, the inner workings are always weak, fragile and in constant danger of failure or collapse.  Watching Frisco grow, I have wondered are some of these developments too good to be true.  Underneath the pomp and circumstance are they just another house of cards?

In August 2014 a crowd gathered including Frisco leaders and officials from Thomas Land & Development for the groundbreaking of the $1.6 Billion, 175-acre Wade Park mixed-use development.  Excitement rumbled among residents when they learned the initial phase would be anchored by a Whole Foods store. Jim Newman, of Newman Real Estate, brokered the land deal for the project and he told the Frisco Enterprise that “having sold and developed land in this city for over 30 years, nothing in North Texas comes close to the future development.”  He went on to say it was difficult getting the Wade Family to sell the land but when they found a partner they could trust like Thomas Land Development they couldn’t be happier.  

In January 2015, the Frisco City Council, Frisco EDC, and Frisco CDC approved $122.75 million in incentives for infrastructure improvements which would be paid from revenue generated by the proposed development as the city collects taxes.  In return, Wade Park agreed to deliver a portion of the development by the end of December 2017. It wouldn’t be long before all that excitement started to dwindle when Frisco learned Thomas Land Development ran out of money and failed to secure additional financing.  Construction froze as contractors began placing liens against the development for unpaid bills and by early 2018 the future of Wade Park was up in the air and Frisco was left with a hole in the ground that locals nicknamed Lake Lebanon. 

Were any alarm bells that the city should have been concerned about so we could have possibly avoided the headache of Wade Park?  A simple google search into Stan Thomas, CEO of Atlanta-based Thomas Land Development is alarming.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported back in 2009 that Stan Thomas had three major projects in bankruptcy protection, and he narrowly averted foreclosure on The Forum Peachtree Parkway development in Atlanta.  He also had projects in London and Orlando that were virtually dead until he could find financing.  He had been sued by former partners and vendors for nonpayment and dozens of liens against him.  His company had gone from 750 employees down to just 50 employees.  Thomas had two other projects in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection which included The Rim in San Antonio, Texas, and Prospect Park in Alpharetta, Georgia. In 2019 a CBS news story pointed out that while Frisco city officials publicly expressed optimism for the project the I-Team had learned behind the scenes there were concerns early on.  They reported the developer Stan Thomas had a reputation for taking on massive debt to develop massive projects.   The report also talked about how Thomas had plans to turn a development in Sacramento into a multi-billion dollar development but it fell through when he could not pay his loans on the project. 

Again, we ask the question was the writing on the wall the whole time?  Could we have avoided the headache of Wade Park with a little more due diligence?  Was Lake Lebanon avoidable?  How do we avoid doing business with companies that are really House of Cards?  How many other projects are just another house of cards?  

Funny Side Note: While it has nothing to do with our story we wanted to share that in 2015, Universal Orlando acquired 475 acres of land for $27.5 million for a future Universal theme park.  But the previous landowner Stan Thomas (mentioned above) sued Universal claiming he still owned rights to enforce private deed restrictions.  The parties settled in April 2018 but it just shows it is a small world after all since now Universal is looking at Frisco.

Back to the point of our blog, we decided to investigate some other local developments and what we found should have Frisco residents concerned. In 2012 Forest Park Medical Center at Frisco Square opened.  The developer was Neal Richards Group which at the time had developed half a billion dollars of healthcare real estate.  At some point, the company kicked off its first physician-owned project called Forest Park Medical brand. NRG became collateral damage in a fraud scandal involving two of its co-founders who were among 21 people indicted in a $40 million kickback scheme that ran from 2009 to approximately 2013 and generated an estimated $200 million in revenue for Forest Park.  It is complicated to understand but to put it in layman’s terms, the hospitals were set up as out-of-network facilities which allowed them to set their own prices then shell companies were opened to funnel millions in bribes and kickback payments in exchange for patient referrals.  Make sense?

In 2018, Philip Carter, the principal of Texas Cash Cow Investments and North Forty Development LLC who had developed Preston at Wade Crossing was arrested. In November 2018 Carter was facing state fraud charges in connection with defrauding nearly 100 Texas investors out of $17.5 million and in May 2022 he was sentenced to 45 years in state prison. 

Then in September 2022, Tim Barton of JMJ Developments was indicted by a federal grand jury on nine felony counts, including securities fraud and wire fraud.  He is accused of defrauding Chinese investors out of $26 million and if convicted could face up to 60 years in prison.  JMJ Developments purchased 4.5 acres of land in 2020 from Invest Group Overseas (IGO), the master developer of The Gate in Frisco’s North Platinum Corridor.  At the time JMJ officials boasted how it would be “the tallest building in Frisco” and was set to open in 2024.  Barton sold the property in The Gate to Petra Development LLC in December 2022 for an estimated $9 million.

We could make our own movie and instead of calling it The Wolf of Wall Street, we should name it The Wolves of the Frisco or The Wolves of the Dallas North Tollway.  Are we the only ones who are curious why so many of the developments in Frisco are somehow connected to shady businessmen or developers?  Maybe we need to hold our city management and the developers they choose to do business with to higher standards so shady shit stops happening.