Update: The Beall Dean Development Lawsuit
Aledo and Fort Worth allege the city annexed 317 acres it had no legal right to touch — and the financial exposure runs into the millions;
Most people in Eastern Parker County have heard some version of the Beall Dean Ranch story by now. The big development debacle and a lawsuit looming – Well they filed and we’ve read the documents.
The City of Aledo and the City of Fort Worth have filed suit against Willow Park in the 43rd Judicial District Court of Parker County, alleging that the entire annexation was unlawful. The case is City of Aledo and City of Fort Worth v. City of Willow Park, Cause No. CV26-0175, filed February 9, 2026. The landowner, Beall-Dean Ranch, Ltd., has intervened in support of Willow Park.
This isn’t a policy disagreement. It’s a jurisdictional dispute backed by court filings, and the legal and financial stakes for Willow Park residents are significant. Let’s walk through what the documents actually say.
What Willow Park Did — and When
The sequence matters here, because the plaintiffs’ core argument is that the order of operations was legally backwards.
On November 12, 2024, the Willow Park City Council held a meeting that approved a cascade of major actions — all related to the Beall Dean Ranch — in a single session. The council passed Ordinance No. 914-24, which expanded Willow Park’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) to encompass approximately 321 acres owned by Beall-Dean Ranch, Ltd. That same meeting also authorized a development agreement with the landowner, accepted the voluntary annexation petition, initiated a Public Improvement District (PID), approved a financial advisory agreement with Hilltop Securities, entered into a 20-year sales tax allocation agreement with Parker County ESD No. 1, and approved $5,135,000 in Certificates of Obligation (Series 2024A) for water and wastewater infrastructure.
Seven major agenda items. One meeting. One development.
Mayor Moss and Councilmember Crummel were absent. The remaining four council members — constituting a bare quorum of the six-member body — approved the entire package.
Facts worth mentioning: Since Mayor Palmer took office Lea Young Mayor Pro-Tem and City Manager at the time Bryan Grimes along with Councilman Greg Runnenbaum are no longer hold their positions, 2 of the 3 resigning. And the former city manager named, Director of Strategic Projects – a position created by current County Judge Pat Deen.
Then, on February 11, 2025, the council passed two more ordinances. Ordinance No. 917-25 annexed a 10.98-acre strip of Bankhead Highway right-of-way — roughly 7,313 feet of road — stretching from just west of Nu Energy Drive to FM 1187. This road corridor was the physical bridge connecting Willow Park’s existing city limits to the Beall Dean Ranch property. On the same agenda, Ordinance No. 918-25 annexed the full 317.732 acres of the ranch itself.
That’s the timeline. Here’s why it’s a problem.
The Jurisdictional Question That Could Unravel Everything
Under Texas Local Government Code § 43.014, a city can only annex property that’s within its extraterritorial jurisdiction. Under § 42.022(b), a city can only expand its ETJ to include an area that’s contiguous to its existing boundaries. These aren’t suggestions. They’re statutory prerequisites.
Aledo and Fort Worth argue that Willow Park failed both tests.
The Beall Dean Ranch property had previously sat within Fort Worth’s ETJ. The landowner, Robert S. Beall — manager of RSB Realty Investment LLC, the general partner of Beall-Dean Ranch, Ltd. — petitioned Fort Worth for release under SB 2038 (codified at LGC §§ 42.104–42.105), the 2023 law that allows property owners to opt out of a city’s ETJ. Fort Worth released the property in October 2023.
But here’s what Aledo says happened next: the property didn’t float into jurisdictional no-man’s-land. It landed squarely inside Aledo’s independent ETJ, which exists by operation of law based on Aledo’s population-based radius under LGC § 42.021. Aledo, with a population of approximately 5,000, holds a one-mile ETJ. The city had an existing development agreement with Levens Capital Partners for the “Dean Ranch” property dating to June 2022. Aledo had constructed water infrastructure — an eight-inch water line — up to the southern edge of the Bankhead Highway right-of-way as part of the Champions Business Park in 2018.
That part rarely gets explained. The SB 2038 release removed Fort Worth’s ETJ overlay. It didn’t remove Aledo’s pre-existing, independently established ETJ claim. If that claim holds, Willow Park expanded its ETJ into another city’s jurisdiction — something § 42.022(c) expressly prohibits, and something the Texas Supreme Court has held renders an annexation void.
The contiguity problem compounds this. When Willow Park passed Ordinance 914-24 expanding its ETJ on November 12, 2024, the Beall Dean Ranch was not contiguous to Willow Park’s existing boundaries. The council didn’t annex the Bankhead Highway corridor — the physical link between Willow Park and the ranch — until three months later, on February 11, 2025. The ETJ expansion came first. The physical connection came after.
The plaintiffs argue this sequence is fatal. Under § 42.022(b), contiguity is a condition precedent to ETJ expansion. You can’t expand your jurisdiction to reach a property, then retroactively build a road corridor to justify the reach.
The Corridor Annexation: A Road to Somewhere
The Bankhead Highway right-of-way annexation (Ordinance 917-25) deserves its own discussion, because it’s the kind of maneuver that Texas courts have historically scrutinized.
Willow Park annexed 10.98 acres of county road right-of-way under LGC § 43.1055, which authorizes cities to annex roads maintained by the county. But the plaintiffs point out two problems. First, that road corridor sat within the ETJ of two other municipalities — Fort Worth held the northern portion, Aledo held the southern portion. Section 42.022(c) prohibits annexation of land within another city’s ETJ without a written agreement. No such agreement exists in the record.
Second, and more fundamentally, § 43.1055(f) explicitly provides that annexation of a road right-of-way does not expand the annexing city’s ETJ. Even if the road annexation were otherwise lawful, it couldn’t serve as the jurisdictional bridge Willow Park needed to bring the Beall Dean Ranch into its ETJ and make it eligible for annexation.
Texas courts call these “shoestring” or “corridor” annexations. They have a long and colorful history in Texas jurisprudence — and courts have generally not been kind to them when they appear designed solely to manufacture contiguity.
The Financial Instruments That Hang in the Balance
If the annexation is voided, the financial consequences for Willow Park don’t stop at legal fees.
The November 12, 2024 council meeting approved $5,135,000 in Certificates of Obligation for water and wastewater infrastructure to serve the Beall Dean Ranch development. That’s debt backed by Willow Park taxpayers for infrastructure serving property that, if the court agrees with the plaintiffs, was never lawfully within the city’s jurisdiction.
The development agreement contemplated a Public Improvement District and a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ). The PID and TIRZ instruments depend on Willow Park having valid municipal jurisdiction over the assessed property. If the annexation fails, those instruments fail with it. The 20-year interlocal agreement with Parker County ESD No. 1 allocating sales tax revenue from the annexed territory would need to be unwound.
The financial advisory relationship with Hilltop Securities (Jason Hughes), retained to structure the PID and TIRZ instruments, adds another layer of entanglement. These aren’t abstract financial tools — they’re commitments that compound over decades. If the jurisdictional foundation collapses, the instruments built on top of it collapse too.
The Attorney Conflict Nobody Saw Coming
One of the most consequential near-term issues in this case has nothing to do with ETJ boundaries or annexation law. It’s about Willow Park’s lawyers.
Aledo has filed an emergency motion to disqualify Messer Fort PLLC — specifically attorneys Wm. Andrew Messer, Bradford E. Bullock, and Arturo D. Rodriguez Jr. — from representing Willow Park. The basis is a concurrent-representation conflict of interest that, once you see it, is difficult to unsee.
Messer Fort PLLC currently represents the City of Aledo as plaintiff in City of Grand Prairie et al. v. State of Texas(Cause No. D-1-GN-23-007785, Travis County), a constitutional challenge to SB 2038. In that case, Bradford Bullock, Arturo Rodriguez, and Andy Messer have been arguing — on Aledo’s behalf — that SB 2038’s ETJ release mechanism is unconstitutional.
In this case (CV26-0175), the same firm represents Willow Park, whose entire defense relies in part on the validity of SB 2038. The firm is literally arguing against the law for one client while relying on the same law for another. Aledo says the firm has been privy to confidential information about Aledo’s ETJ boundaries and litigation strategies — information that could now benefit Willow Park.
Andy Messer also serves as Willow Park’s City Attorney, the official who accepted service of this lawsuit on the city’s behalf. Aledo’s motion notes that despite being informed of the conflict, Messer has indicated the firm intends to continue representing Willow Park.
If the court grants the disqualification motion, Willow Park would need to retain entirely new counsel in the middle of active litigation — at significant additional cost and strategic disadvantage. City Attorney William P. Chesser is also named as counsel of record, but the firm’s institutional knowledge of Willow Park’s annexation strategy would leave with Messer Fort.
This Isn’t the First Time
The 2017 case Weatherford v. Willow Park (CV-16-1468) ended with an agreed judgment requiring Willow Park to disannex 81.928 acres and to — this is a direct court order — perform all future annexations in full compliance with state law, including the Texas Open Meetings Act and Chapters 42 and 43 of the Local Government Code.
That’s not a suggestion or a policy statement. It’s a court decree. If the current annexation is found to violate state law, the plaintiffs could potentially seek contempt sanctions based on that prior order. At minimum, it establishes a documented history of annexation overreach that will be difficult for Willow Park to explain away.
Who’s at the Table
The parties in this case tell their own story about the stakes involved.
Plaintiffs: The City of Aledo, represented by Taylor, Olson, Adkins, Sralla & Elam, LLP (attorneys Tammy Ardolf, Alicia K. Kreh, Rachel Raggio, and Natalee Maxwell), and the City of Fort Worth, represented by its own Law Department (Christopher Mosley and Rich McCracken). Fort Worth’s involvement isn’t incidental — the city has an interest in preventing the precedent of smaller cities strategically absorbing property released from Fort Worth’s ETJ through SB 2038 opt-outs.
Defendant: The City of Willow Park, a Type A general-law municipality of approximately 6,300 residents, represented by Messer Fort PLLC (Andy Messer, Bradford Bullock, Arturo Rodriguez Jr., Julie Fort, Sherry Brown, and Ashlin Guzman), with City Attorney William P. Chesser.
Intervenor: Beall-Dean Ranch, Ltd. (Robert S. Beall, Manager of the General Partner), represented by Winstead PC (Arthur J. Anderson and Matthew K. Joeckel). The ranch acquired the property in 2022 with plans for a multi-phase mixed-use development — residential, commercial, retail, and light industrial. Beall-Dean has already invested millions in planning, entitlements, and infrastructure design.
Non-Parties of Interest: Engineering firms Kimley-Horn and Associates and Freese and Nichols have been subpoenaed by Willow Park for ETJ-related documents. Kimley-Horn has filed a motion to quash. Freese and Nichols faces a March 5, 2026 production deadline.
The Tradeoffs That Don’t Get Discussed
There’s a version of this story that’s simple: Willow Park wanted growth, a landowner wanted a city partner, and they made it happen. Economic development. New revenue. The kind of deal that gets presented as a win.
But the details complicate that narrative considerably.
A general-law city — which, unlike a home-rule city, possesses only those powers expressly granted by statute — used a combination of voluntary ETJ expansion, road corridor annexation, and consent-based annexation to bring 317 acres into its jurisdiction. That sequence required every step to be procedurally airtight, because general-law cities don’t get the benefit of residual authority. Any action not expressly authorized is ultra vires. Full stop.
The council approved the foundational actions with two members absent, packing seven major items into a single meeting. The contiguity requirement was arguably satisfied after the ETJ expansion rather than before it. The road corridor that connects everything sits in territory that at least two other cities claim as their own. And the city’s lead law firm is arguing opposite positions on the same statute in two different courtrooms.
These are the details where the governance is happening. Whether or not the court ultimately sides with Willow Park, the process by which these decisions were made — the compressed timelines, the absent council members, the layered financial commitments, the attorney conflict — deserves the kind of scrutiny that most residents don’t have time to give it.
That’s what we’re here for.
What Happens Next
The case is active. Aledo and Fort Worth are seeking both declaratory relief (voiding Ordinances 914-24, 917-25, and 918-25) and injunctive relief (prohibiting Willow Park from exercising authority over the property or constructing infrastructure through other cities’ jurisdictions). Willow Park has filed its answer with general denials and has launched a discovery offensive through subpoenas to engineering firms, likely to challenge the factual basis of Aledo’s ETJ claim.
The SB 2038 constitutional challenge in Travis County (City of Grand Prairie et al. v. State of Texas) is a wild card. If that court strikes down SB 2038, the statutory mechanism by which the property left Fort Worth’s ETJ evaporates — and Willow Park’s position becomes substantially harder to defend.
Meanwhile, the engineering data from Kimley-Horn and Freese and Nichols may determine the factual question at the center of everything: where, exactly, did the ETJ boundaries run?
The documents are in the Parker County court file. We’ll be watching.
The Citizen is civic intelligence for Eastern Parker County. This analysis is based on court filings and public records in Cause No. CV26-0175, 43rd Judicial District Court, Parker County, Texas. It does not constitute legal advice. We did the reading.