Bob on Business: Yes, your home really can be a castle

by Bob Francis, Fort Worth Report
December 7, 2025

If you need to live in a mansion but want to be within 20 minutes of downtown Fort Worth, there’s a home for you. However, it might set you back seven figures, at least. 

Up for auction is a seven bedroom, castlelike home complete with towers, double-height ceilings, fireplaces, columns, ornate ceilings and other accoutrement suitable for the lifestyles of the rich and famous. 

The house was formerly the home of Texas Rangers co-owner and XTO co-founder Bob Simpson who built it in 2006 but hasn’t owned it since 2021. 

The home was previously listed for sale at $11.75 million. It went on the auction block on Dec. 3 with bidding to end Dec. 18. 

The 19,000-square-foot house, built by J. Lambert Custom Homes, is located at 9553 Bella Terra Drive in Fort Worth’s upscale Montserrat neighborhood. 

The home includes a wine room, private theater, custom-designed gymnasium and an owner’s suite with a private office above accessed by an elevator. 

The residence is one of many million dollar-plus homes that are up for sale in the state. The number of million dollar-plus homes accounted for 4% of total sales, up from 3.6% last year. Total dollar volume from these properties represented 15.7% of all residential sales volume across the state, up from 14.3% the previous year, according to the Texas Realtors Association. 

The North Texas area saw the most statewide sales last year with 4,992 million-plus homes sold, totaling 38.7% of the total state’s sales. 

Fort Worth company makes acquisition 

TRP Infrastructure Services, a Fort Worth-based national provider of roadway pavement marking and traffic control solutions, acquired Highway Barricades & Services of Corpus Christi. 

This enables TRP to expand operations and better serve customers across Texas and southeast markets. TRP is a portfolio company of Arlington Capital Partners, a Washington, D.C.-area private investment firm specializing in government-regulated industries.

Highway Barricades provides pavement marking and traffic control services across South Texas. Highway Barricades will operate as TRP’s South Texas division. 

TRP has provided pavement marking and traffic control services for more than 5,000 highway projects, including complex urban interchanges, rural roadways, tollways, bridges, and city and county thoroughfares.

Highway Barricades is TRP’s seventh acquisition since Arlington invested in the company in 2021. 

Texas minority business ranking 

In a study of the 2021 U.S. census, Texas ranked sixth overall among the 50 states in the number of minority-owned businesses per 1,000 in the minority population. 

The Lone Star State averages 23.93 minority-owned businesses per 1,000 minority population. Texas has 140,402 businesses in this category, second nationwide only to California. 

About 62,350 are owned by a member of the Asian community. The study comes from work management firm Asana, which analyzed the business census data.

Real estate deals 

Fort Worth-based PHP Capital Partners recently acquired the four-building, 115,000-square-foot Gateway Business Center in Irving, just east of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

This is PHP’s fourth 2025 acquisition, including the 50,000-square-foot Marine Creek Business Park in northwest Fort Worth, which closed in the third quarter.

Do you have something for the Bob on Business column? Email Bob Francis, business editor for the Fort Worth Report, at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org.

At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

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