Inside Grand Prairie Inc.
Examining the city’s growing corporate model — and what it means for taxpayers, businesses, and the future of local governance.
This is a long-form investigative feature exploring how Grand Prairie’s city-owned corporations are reshaping local government, business, and public life. You can listen to an audio version of this story below. Support future independent reporting like this through buymeacoffee.com/facesofgp.
When Councilman Kurt Johnson told residents at a recent town hall that Grand Prairie was freezing hiring and couldn’t give raises to employees due to falling sales tax revenues, the statement didn’t seem to match the city’s financial reports. After a review of the Grand Prairie’s 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, I saw no clear signs of financial distress.
That contradiction led me to dig deeper into how Grand Prairie’s finances actually work. What I found wasn’t a budget problem — it was a boundary problem. The city has built a system of corporations that blur the line between public service and private enterprise, shaping everything from downtown projects to land ownership.
The Rise of City-Owned Corporations
Over the past several years, the City of Grand Prairie has massively expanded its city-owned corporation structure designed to spur development, manage major assets and provide services to residents. For decades, the city operated with just two corporations— the Sports Facilities Development Corporation and the Housing Finance Corporation — both created several years ago.
The Sports Facilities Development Corporation was created in the 90’s to operate Lone Star Park.
The Housing Finance Corporation was created in the 90’s to manage affordable housing projects, including Mountain Creek Retirement Community, Cotton Creek Apartments, Willow Tree Apartments, and a workforce housing education program. In the past year, it’s acquired 7 existing apartment complexes in response to an aggressive campaign of so-called “traveling HFCs.” Five Housing Finance Corporations in Texas cities, namely Pecos, TX, began aggressively targeting apartments located in other cities for purchase, leaving many Texas cities to respond by purchasing their own apartment complexes themselves. These cities exploited a loophole in state law, and in response, cities like Grand Prairie filed a grievance with the state, which outlawed the practice of traveling HFCs in September 2025, but not before the city of Grand Prairie had acquired them.
But between 2020 and 2024, three new entities were added: the Local Government Corporation, the Hotel Development Corporation and the Public Finance Corporation.
The Grand Prairie Local Government Corporation was created in 2020 to acquire, develop, and redevelop property on the city’s behalf; it’s the corporation which fuels the development for EpicCentral and now the Downtown Revitalization project that is underway.
The Grand Prairie Hotel Development Corporation was created in 2021 to promote economic development, including but not limited to the acquisition, development, and redevelopment of real property within the City and the lease of City facilities, including two hotels and a conference center.
The Public Finance Corporation was created in 2023 but so far has no assets or activity, according to the recent ACFR.
While each of these corporations serves a specific purpose, together they’ve created a complex financial ecosystem. While private corporations are for-profit businesses owned by individuals or shareholders, municipally owned corporations are government entities established by a municipality to provide public services rather than to make a profit. Profitability makes it easy to determine whether a private corporation is successful or failing. But how do you determine success or failure of a municipally owned corporation when it’s based on providing services? Municipal financial operations are both complicated and straight-forward. By state law, when tax revenue is collected, there are specific places it must be spent. What makes Councilman Johnson’s comments confusing for the average resident is that in terms of Grand Prairie’s tax dollars and municipal utilities, such as water, property taxes, streets, etc - they are operating in the black and doing well.
Alternatively, city’s corporation finances are difficult to understand because they are “legally, financially, and administratively autonomous separate corporations” from the city itself. Each of these corporations are directed by a board of 4-7 people who are appointed by the city council, though the city council and the mayor sit on many of these boards themselves. This means that elected officials are largely the ones driving the city’s corporate activities, while the city government itself oversees the rest.
These corporations in cities of our size aren’t uncommon, but what makes Grand Prairie’s corporate strategy unique is the scope and grand vision. While other cities rely more heavily on public-private partnerships, if they use corporations at all, Grand Prairie’s corporations largely operate separately from its private sector. For example, Arlington built up its entertainment district through major private investment and city support, entities such as sponsored ATT Stadium for the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Live which is privately owned and operated with city support.
Grand Prairie owns several of its ventures such as The Summit, Epic Waters, The Epic, Lone Star Park, Epic Central, the Grand Prairie Convention Center, Ruthe Jackson Event Center, Prairie Lakes Golf Course, Tangle Ridge Golf Course, etc - all owned and operated by the city of Grand Prairie. Companies lease space or property managers manage it, but Grand Prairie controls a great deal of its oversight and vision.
Elected CEOs and the Three-Year Cycle
Unlike private corporations with long-term executives, the leadership of Grand Prairie’s system changes every three years — determined not by market performance but by voter turnout. Each new council brings new priorities, and since those council members appoint the boards — and often serve on them — the direction of the city’s corporations shifts with every election. We elect our representatives to steward tax dollars, maintain infrastructure, and represent the public — not to run corporations with complex revenue streams across multiple industries. That responsibility demands a different kind of expertise and a level of continuity that city government, by nature, can’t provide. And yet, the council now oversees four separate companies — none of which must be profitable in the open market to survive, and all of which they also help govern.
That instability wasn’t built into the system by design, but it’s an unavoidable byproduct of it. The model assumes continuity where politics guarantees change. What began as a long-term strategy to serve residents has become a revolving-door enterprise managed by people whose primary job was never meant to include corporate governance of this scope. This is where the larger question starts to surface: when does a service become a business? Each new board may inherit a mission to serve, but over time, service takes on the logic of business: expansion, revenue, and self-preservation. It’s not a flaw in leadership; it’s a flaw in design. A structure meant to guarantee service has instead created an endless cycle of shifting priorities — one election away from redefining what “public good” even means.
This structure entangles tax dollars with elections in ways few people recognize. Imagine a council member sitting on the board of a city-owned corporation that’s losing money while running for reelection. That official has an incentive to protect the project’s image until after the vote. In a private company, a struggling CEO can be replaced overnight. In government, accountability comes only with the next election — or an expensive recall — long after the financial damage has been done.
The opportunity or appearance of eventual corruption in a system like this is inevitable. A council that functions both as regulator and competitor is inevitably placed in situations where private development threatens a city-owned venture. Even the perception of that conflict undermines public trust, and the more the city expands its corporate footprint, the more impossible it becomes to avoid those overlaps.
Corporations Built to “Serve”
To maintain the level of services the city feels the residents need, Grand Prairie has chosen to expand rapidly — annexing new land, approving more housing developments, and investing heavily in tourism and entertainment through its city-run corporations. The strategy appears to bring energy and attention to the community, filling the calendar with city-hosted festivals, performances, and attractions that draw visitors to EpicCentral and Main Street. But again, we ask how the city now defines “service.” Each new project and “free” event is framed as something done for residents yet it depends on the same consumer spending that sustains private corporations because the city also relies on the sales tax revenue to make their corporations sustainable. While you’re in EpicCentral at the Arts and Music Festival, the hope is that you’ll spend money at one of the surrounding restaurants. The issue is that the city also invites food trucks and venders to attend the event at $125-$175 each, all of which compete with the restaurants themselves. The result is a system where public service and market performance are increasingly indistinguishable — where maintaining amenities now means selling experiences. When a city only does a few of these events a year, they do contribute to community togetherness and spur growth, but the city has ramped up its event activities to the point that there are essentially one major event happening every week. Each of these events become less popular with residents because they happen so frequently, but they also pull people away from other businesses in their own city. Which leads to the next issue: competition with its own business community.
City Hall vs. Main Street
By operating its own corporations, the city has placed itself in direct competition with the very businesses it’s meant to support. When taxpayer dollars are used to advertise city-owned ventures, the line between public service and marketplace competition disappears. The Grand Prairie Convention Center created competition for privately owned event centers in the city - as well as competition for the Ruthe Jackson Center it already owned less than two miles away. It begs the question - what growth is necessary because of demand and what growth is the city’s own grandiose plans? Were the entities that the city already owned making money? Were they self-sustaining?
It’s beginning to feel like Grand Prairie has built a model that treats growth itself as a public service.
Something else noticed more by residents is that the city often duplicates the work already being done by its own residents, nonprofits, and businesses — not because it needs to, but because it doesn’t seem to know how to support what’s already there. As an institution, it seems to feel a constant need to do something to prove its value — another event, another initiative, another program, another development — even when the community already has it covered.
This year, for example, local nonprofits and corporate sponsors organized four separate school supply drives, fully funded by private donations. The city and city council members hosted four more. The demand didn’t double — it just scattered. With families divided across eight different events, half the privately funded supplies went undistributed. That’s not collaboration; that’s waste — of private generosity, volunteer time, and taxpayer labor. The same thing happens throughout the year. While numerous churches and organizations plan trunk-or-treats, the city launches its own “Street or Treat” and other pre-Halloween celebrations. When the business community holds networking events, the city organizes its own.
The truth is, the city could probably cut back on a quarter of what it’s doing and residents would still feel like it was doing plenty. Grand Prairie already has an active calendar and visible leadership — no one is accusing the city of not doing enough. That’s what makes it feel less like coordination and more like a kind of civic anxiety — a need to prove it’s working for the community when, in reality, it’s often just working beside it — or worse, against it. But most taxpayers aren’t demanding more programs or festivals — they’re just asking for another grocery store on the north side of town.
So much of this effort seems driven by the idea that activity equals service, that motion equals progress. But sometimes, the most effective thing a city can do is to step back, listen, and let the people already doing the work keep doing it — with the city’s support, not its shadow.
Tax Exemptions for City Corporations, Not Small Businesses
The city is providing “services,” but it still relies on sales tax revenues to fund those services. When sales tax revenue dips, but the debt and overhead is still owed, it creates an imbalance. That imbalance helps explain why leaders now warn residents about ballot measures like Proposition 9, which would exempt a portion of business property from taxation.
Councilman Junior Ezeonu addressed Proposition 9 publicly, posting a video urging residents to vote against it. The amendment increases the real property ad valorem tax exemption for business owners from $25,000 to $125,000 — a change he called “a tax giveaway to large corporations that would shift the financial burden to homeowners,” a comment that shows a lack of understanding for how tax exemptions work.
In reality, Proposition 9 most directly benefits small and mid-sized businesses — the ones paying annual taxes on the equipment, furniture, or tools they already own. Most residents have no idea that businesses are taxed annually on things classified as Business Personal Property - tangible, moveable assets that a business can use to generate revenue. These would be any items from a hair dryer in a salon to a computer in an insurance office that are not attached to the property itself, which means that even businesses that lease their space must pay property tax for the items they own inside. For a large corporation like IKEA, a $125,000 exemption is negligible; for a local salon, café, or retail shop on Main Street, it’s the difference between surviving and closing.
Ezeonu’s comments reveal something deeper than disagreement over tax policy. They expose the tension at the heart of Grand Prairie’s financial model. The city’s growing network of corporations has become so intertwined with local revenues that even modest reductions in the tax base feel like existential threats. In a city like Arlington, where public-private partnerships share the burden of growth, a measure like Prop 9 might be absorbed easily. But in Grand Prairie, where the city itself operates entertainment venues, water parks, rec centers and housing complexes, every lost tax dollar reverberates through a system built to sustain itself.
Something else to consider is that the city’s enterprises pay no ad valorem taxes at all, yet the same officials who manage those entities caution against small tax relief for private business owners. It’s a level of hypocrisy that’s hard to ignore. “Good for me, but not for thee.” Each time Grand Prairie acquires a property or business under one of its corporations, that asset is removed from the tax rolls, meaning it no longer contributes to the very schools and services the system was designed to support. Members of the school board have expressed concern about this, requesting a seat at the table for decisions that directly affect their budgets — requests that, so far, have gone unanswered.
Adding to the complexity, Grand Prairie’s debt isn’t supported solely by property taxes but by the revenues of its city-run corporations. According to the 2024 bond filings, taxpayers remain ultimately responsible if tourism or sales revenues underperform. That dependency helps explain why city leaders view measures like Proposition 9 as threats rather than relief — not because the proposal itself is reckless, but because the city’s system has blurred the boundary between public service and private sustainability.
This pattern also helps explain the long, uneasy distance between City Hall and the business community. For decades, the city’s posture toward local enterprise — and especially toward the Chamber of Commerce — has been one of cautious detachment. That’s not to say every council member or employee shares that attitude; many are genuinely supportive of local business. But as an institution, Grand Prairie often prefers to operate alone — a habit deeply ingrained over time. Instead of collaborating with local companies for sponsorships or programming, the city often looks beyond its borders for partners or stages events entirely on its own. One councilman has said to multiple people, including the previous Chamber CEO, that he doesn’t believe we need a Chamber at all. It’s a mindset born from the same philosophy that built its corporations: if we control it, we can make it work our way. While much of this vision is framed around service and community improvement, it’s also about control — a struggle that has defined Grand Prairie’s leadership for generations.
This approach is reaching its limits. Rather than telling small business owners they don’t need tax relief while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to host another city-sponsored event, Grand Prairie could be working with them — not merely as vendors at pop-up markets, but as sponsors, planners, and true partners in shaping the community’s future. Increasingly, the business community has noticed that it is being ignored, sidelined, or even placed in direct competition with the city itself — a pattern that is breeding resentment and deserves urgent attention.
Do Our Elected Leaders Really Understand the Numbers?
Perhaps the biggest concern about this system is the competency of our elected officials when it comes to operating these large scale operations. Councilmembers aren’t elected by voters because of their extensive knowledge of finance; often, it’s for their likeability and willingness to show up and support their constituents. I’ve listened to several town halls this year, town halls that rely heavily on city employees sitting in the audience and helping council members answer questions, especially on matters of finance. These council members are expected to make decisions upon the assumption they understand how everything works; these town halls give me pause that some aren’t doing their financial homework. To continue operating our city in a way that doesn’t lead down a dark financial path, residents will need to start demanding more financial literacy of our elected officials and voting like we want to keep our city financially solvent.
We’re All In This Together