A “Cement Pond” in McKinney

For those who wish they all could be Collin County girls: how about some oceanfront property-in North Texas? Stonebridge, Rick Strauss’s $200 million, 6,230-acre project, is one of the most ambitious undertakings since daddy took the T-bills away. But the feature that sticks out like a shark’s fin amid the Baja Oklahoma terrain is the beach.

That’s right, we said beach, complete with real sand. Of course, the ocean is ersatz: even the son of the former Demo national chairman and the nephew of Her Honor doesn’t have that kind of clout. It’s real water, but hold the salt, barracudas, and men-o-war.

Beneath the marine accouterments, the Stonebridge pseudo-sea amounts to what Jed Clampett would have instantly recognized as a cement pond, albeit a largish one: concrete-bottomed, filtered, and chlorinated, it covers about a half acre.

Did the beachboys over at Strauss’s RCS development get some sand in their gears? Nope, not according to marketing VP Jack Crumpler, though he acknowledges that “the only other place they have these is Southern California.” Crumpler good-humoredly rejects the “concrete swimmin’ hole” moniker, referring to the inland beach instead by its official designation, the Beach and Tennis Club.

“It’s much more upscale than the ol’ swimmin’ hole,” Crumpler says. “There’s no muddy water. Its appeal is that it’s a taste of the beach, located on the northern outskirts of Dallas.”

Sounds groovy, but don’t load up the dune buggy yet. The Stonebridge beach is not open to the public, and houses there will run from $80.000 to a cool million. In other words, you’ll need funds, funds, funds.