We have confirmed that in a deal put together by Dallas developer Don Silverman, the great Deion Sanders has sold his 10-bedroom Prosper mansion and 82 acres at 1280 North Preston Road. This comes after news broke last week that Texas Education Agency plans to revoke the charter for Sanders’ Prime Prep Academy due to financial mismanagement, and a messy divorce from wife Pilar Sanders, who has apparently jumped the shark.
But then, apparently today, Prime Prep Academy’s board is supposed to debate and maybe vote on authorizing the rehiring of Sanders, who co-founded the school, as athletic director.
“The former NFL star, who loaned his Prime Time nickname to the school, was fired, rehired and fired again within a couple of months late last year. The first firing came after he was accused of assaulting the school’s chief financial officer during a staff meeting. No explanation was given for the second dismissal.”
Honestly, I cannot keep up with this drama. Maybe Deion and his girlfriend, Tracey Edmonds, just needed to be done with that Prosper albatross and make a new nest. After all, he still owns a $4.8 million penthouse at The Azure …
Previously marketed for $21 million, Sanders’ home and land is valued at just more than $11.7 million by the Collin County Central Appraisal District. The 30,000-square-foot home sits on an 84-acre lot and has just about everything an aging (watch it, Miss Joanna!) professional athlete could want, including a football field, tennis court, pools, a 12-acre lake, basketball court, arcade, bowling alley, a guest house, and a screening room. There’s also an awards gallery, but the new owner could repurpose that as a wine tasting room or art gallery maybe? Who knows!
It’s a pretty private location that won’t attract much attention should you find yourself in the middle of a domestic squabble, and hopefully it’s had plenty of repair work done since Deion posted this photo on Twitter of his living room ceiling caving in from water damage.
So here’s the deal: Don Silverman put this deal together. You know him: he, along with Mat Malouf, was going to do that $175 million, 160,000 square foot City Lights mixed-use project in Dallas down on two blocks stretching between Bryan and Live Oak back in, oh, 2007. Or maybe 2008. But then, surprise surprise, the neighborhood poo pooed it saying they were losing their downtown views. Wow — what if it had been built? Was it? After three years of trying to make the project work, Don threw his hands up and put the land on the market for sale.
“You can only bang your head on the wall for so long then you can decide to go on and do something else,” Silverman told the Dallas Business Journal.
No kidding! Like, duh! So now he’s developing up in Prosper. Early reports tell me there will be a Krogers going in on the corner, and some other stores, of course. I’m popping up there this afternoon to get you all the dirt.
The buyer of the land is a company called Bloomfield Homes, Inc. out of Southlake. According to their website. they are a pretty cool home builder and have won some major accolades: in 2014, Bloomfield Homes was ranked the 7th largest homebuilder in D/FW by Residential Strategies. And Builder Magazine ranked them 73rd nationally in 2013. That’s probably why Builder Magazine named them the “fastest growing private builder in America” in 2011. That prediction was right on target. They have homes literally all over D/FW. What I have learned very quickly from talking to Don Dykstra at Bloomfield is that they plan about three phases of homes on the 82 acres, with 50 lots in phase I. The price ranges will be more upscale than what they have been doing, and they are developing a new set of floor-plans for these upscale, luxury homes.
What about the house on those 6 to 8 acres? Not sure. They may auction it all off.
“It’s got an 8 acre lake and a bowling alley,” Don told me on the phone.
This I’ve got to see. Sounds like it would be perfect for an auction. Stay tuned, this story might grow as much as that 30,000 square foot house of Deions!.
OH! How much? Don wouldn’t say, but he did say they didn’t pay original asking. But maybe this sale gives Deion some cashola to invest back in Prime Prep?
