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Commercial Real Estate

T. Boone Pickens Will No Longer Be Shooting Hoops at Mesa Vista Ranch

As my grandma used to say, don't get old.
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Tim Rogers is somewhat skeptical about the sale of T. Boone Pickens’ Mesa Vista Ranch, wondering why you would part with a custom-built Shangri-La that sits on top of the largest aquifer in North America and is permitted for 40,000 acre-feet of water rights. I’ll take Pickens at his word when he says it’s because he can’t see well enough to hunt or golf or enjoy the property anymore. Six years ago, I had the opportunity to board his private jet at Love Field for a day trip to tour it. While my former boss and Pickens shared stories about Ted Turner, wistfully discussing his four-girlfriend arrangement (a different one for every week of the month) and enjoying the schadenfreude of his occasional scheduling snafus, I pressed my nose to the window like a kid to watch the ranch unfold below.

Back then, Pickens was still driving his Cadillac Escalade along the ranch’s dirt roads and he chauffered me around, pointing out pioneer grave sites while getting constant stock updates on his phone. At the time, he was also still married to Madeleine. She’s the one responsible for packing up and moving his childhood home, built by his grandfather in Holdenville, Oklahoma, onto the property. When they put the pieces back together, she even made sure they mounted the basketball hoop on the garage. Pickens told me the driveway at the original homesite, which served as the court, was a good 6 inches off the ground, so he would launch himself off the curb when taking shots so no one could block him.

The whole place was clearly a labor of love, but Pickens told me on the tour that, like Warren Buffett, he believes inherited wealth is inherently destructive, so he had already decided that when the ranch is sold the proceeds will go to his foundation. He also said the sale would come with a condition: he expected the shortlist of potential buyers to attend his funeral

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