Following an executive session Tuesday morning, the Brownwood City Council ratified a Brownwood Municipal Development District incentive package and approved a City Chapter 380 agreement with Mustang Ridge Venture Capital LLC, to build a housing development project known as the Preserve on Mustang Ridge.

Ray Tipton, BMDD Executive Director, told the Council, “It will be a residential subdivision of 55 duplexes built near the Brownwood Middle School, which will be 110 actual housing units. Overall investment by the developer would be approximately $20 million. Incentive-wise they’ve asked us to cover a portion of the $1.6 million infrastructure. That’s been the precedent of the City, to cover the infrastructure since we will own and operate at it after construction. The developer will pay for all of that up front and the BMDD improved an incentive package where we will pay $11,820 every time one of the duplexes is complete, issuance of the residential CO, not to exceed $650,000 within three years of construction. Then the City on the proposal is to do a graduated scale of property tax rebates over five years, not to exceed $375,000 total, and that’s similar to what we’ve done on some past partner projects as well.”

Robert Wade, with Mustang Ridge Venture Capital LLC, said construction is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2025 with completion expected in 14 months, so rental properties could be available at the start of 2027.

Wade also shared the following information about the development.

“We looked for where we felt was a need, what exists and maybe what there isn’t as many of … and nice rental property is hard to find,” Wade said. “We felt like that was the market we needed to be in. These are all three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, and they all have garages. It’s intended for young professionals, young families to give them a quality place to live. We’re coming into to build something you’ll be proud to live in and something that’s constructed well with a neighborhood feel. The project has a road within the property that makes a loop and we’re doing street lights and sidewalks on both sides of the road so that if you live in that community it feels private. We’ll have a small dog park and kid park on one of the lots. It’s a contained neighborhood and we wanted to give it that feel to attract families.”

Regarding pricing, Wade said, “Our target is $2,000 on a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath. That is slightly at the higher end of the market on the rental properties, but there’s not a lot of things like this on the market for comparison. The ones we’ve found, that’s where they’re hitting on rents.”

Mayor Stephen Haynes said of the development, “New housing is important and we can’t grow the workforce we need for our new businesses without places for those people to live. To have a developer come in with 110 units and places for people to live is really an exciting project. If you look at the amount of the investment, $20 million is incredible, so we are so encouraged. If years past we struggled with housing because we didn’t have the infrastructure in place for people to build houses. If you look at the nature of the incentive, what we’re highly incentivizing is in the infrastructure. We’re putting our money into building streets and curbs, water and sewer, so this housing development can go. It’s encouraging to me we have the mechanism to do that. And we don’t actually pay for the infrastructure until a CO issued, and that’s super important.”