Texas billionaire brothers’ McCall-area development draws big backlash. What just happened

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Texas billionaire brothers’ McCall-area development draws big backlash. What just happened

Citing widespread public backlash, a development company owned by two billionaire Texas brothers will not present plans for the 1,130-unit development at a public meeting as previously planned.

DF Development has reviewed comments submitted to the Valley County Planning and Zoning Commission and on social media and would like to take time to meet with the community through town halls and outreach meetings to learn more about concerns and identify strategies to address them, said Christine Richman, a spokesperson for the proposal, in an email to Valley County P&Z staff on Tuesday.

“We will be conducting this outreach in early 2025 and therefore would like to postpone the hearing on our application until early- to mid-2025,” said Richman, who is the principal of Salt Lake City, Utah, firm GSBS Consulting. GSBS was hired by DF Development to present the proposal to Valley County.

An artist’s conceptual rendering of a gathering space in the RedRidge Village center, part of a proposed 1,100-home development southwest of McCall.

A report on the development prepared by Valley County staff lists 114 letters in opposition to the proposal, six offering suggestions for improvement and one in favor.

A public hearing on the development was set to take place at Thursday’s P&Z meeting in Cascade.

The 1,130-unit RedRidge Village in Valley County would be developed about 100 miles north of Boise. The planned unit development is proposed for a 2,258-acre area on the western edge of Valley County to the south of McCall.

It is only a sliver of a larger 30,000-acre project stretching across a wide swath of land south of New Meadows in Adams County.

DF Development, owned by Texas billionaire brothers Dan and Farris Wilks, proposes more than 1,100 homes in this area on the edge of Valley County south of McCall. This is part of a larger planned development that includes a swath of Adams County just to the west.

DF Development is owned by brothers Dan and Farris Wilks, of Cisco, Texas. DF Development purchased about 172,000 acres of land in Central Idaho in 2016. Since then, the company has sold and developed smaller parcels, but no project has compared to the size of the RedRidge Village proposal.

The company still owns 57,908 acres of land in Valley County and 60,930 acres in Adams County, including the land on which the project is proposed.

The Wilks brothers sold a 70% share in their fracking company Frac Tech for $3.5 billion in 2011. Farris Wilks, 72, is estimated to have a net worth of $1.9 billion, with Dan Wilks, 68, estimated to have a net worth of about $2 billion, according to Forbes.

In the RedRidge proposal, homes would be built in neighborhoods around a village center and include a variety of designs with multifamily housing, single-family residences and large estate lots. The development would be accessed by several roads off West Mountain Road, which extends south from McCall and along the west side of Lake Cascade, passing the West Mountains and Tamarack Resort.

Ski mountaineering racers make their way up the 45th Parallel run during 2016’s Northwest Passage Ski Mountaineering Vertical Race at Brundage Ski resort. The ski resort and McCall’s scenic Payette Lake are north of a residential development proposed by two billionaire Texas brothers.

“The vision for the full 30,000 acres includes areas of limited development surrounded by acres of wildlife habitat,” according to application materials.

Plans include a vineyard, retail and restaurant spaces, a community hall and an outdoor amphitheater with lawn seating for about 2,000 people. A local trail network is planned within the development that would connect to regional trails.

Adams County has not yet received a formal proposal, but application materials list a clustered development in Adams County about 4,900 acres in size, as well as a 9,100-acre wilderness preserve, 12,900 acres of undeveloped steep terrain and about 3,500 acres of open space and buffered areas.

The Idaho Statesman contributed. This story has been edited and abridged from the original. Read

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