Flower Mound, Texas
Texas
A federally backed plan to build a whole new city here collapsed when residents threatened to cut the land loose from the town.
In 1970 there were fewer than two thousand people living in Flower Mound. That year two Dallas businessmen, Edward Marcus and Raymond Nasher, secured eighteen million dollars in federal loan guarantees to build something they called Flower Mound New Town. It was meant to be a model community. North Texas State University agreed to move its administrative offices out here and handle all the research for the project. Advertisements were still running as late as 1974. Then the neighbors killed it. Residents threatened to disannex a chunk of the town, carving the land right out from under the development. The plan collapsed. The fight split Flower Mound so badly that elections were bitterly contested for five straight years. In 1976 the project lost its federal loan guarantees, and Texas Monthly handed it the Bum Steer Award.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
but it was abandoned after residents threatened to disannex a portion of the town to thwart the development. The disannexation effort sharply divided the town, and led to a number of strongly contested elections between 1971 and 1976. In 1976, Texas Monthly awarded the project its "Bum Steer Award" after the project lost its federal loan guarantees.
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