{"id":172843,"date":"2026-02-20T12:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T12:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/172843\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T12:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T12:42:07","slug":"midway-files-suit-against-hutto-officials-seeks-300m-in-damages-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/172843\/","title":{"rendered":"Midway files suit against Hutto officials, seeks $300M in damages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHouston-based development company Midway<\/a> filed a petition Feb. 18 against the Hutto Economic Development Corporation<\/a>, Hutto Mayor Mike Snyder, real estate development firm Terra Halona<\/a> and its co-managing partner Joel Scott, seeking $250 million in exemplary damages and $50 million in compensatory damages.<\/p>\n

The background<\/p>\n

The lawsuit\u2014filed with Harris County District Clerk Marilyn Burgess\u2014comes more than four months after the Hutto EDC announced it had ended negotiations<\/a> with Midway to serve as the master developer for the Cottonwood Properties in Hutto.<\/p>\n

Midway was first selected<\/a> as the developer for the 250-acre site in December 2023, with the goal of building a mixed-use site<\/a> including retail, grocery, restaurant and entertainment options. In March 2024, Midway and HEDC agreed to a memorandum of understanding, which was approved by Hutto City Council in April of that year.<\/p>\n

The details<\/p>\n

According to the filing, Terra Halona representatives had previously introduced Midway to former HEDC director Bob Farley, and presented Midway with a proposal to partner on the project that was never agreed to. Terra Halona also helped arrange a meeting between Midway and Snyder, after Midway was formally selected as the master developer.<\/p>\n

In its petition, the development company claims that during the initial planning phase, Snyder asked how Terra Halona would be compensated. The petition states that Snyder said \u201cthings would not end well for Midway\u201d if Terra Halona was not satisfied with the compensation structure, and that \u201cthe city and HEDC would restart the process with another developer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brad Freels, chairman and CEO of Midway, subsequently explained to Snyder\u2014a HEDC board member\u2014that Terra Halona wasn\u2019t part of Midway\u2019s development team and that its only involvement was the initial introduction to Farley, per the filing.<\/p>\n

In an email cited in the petition\u2014which Community Impact also obtained in a public information request to the city of Hutto\u2014Snyder wrote to Freels that he needed \u201cto know that both Midway and Terramark are good with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott serves as the president of TerraMark Ventures, which joined with Halona Development to form the real estate development firm Terra Halona.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow that is shown, whether by some agreement or something is up to you all,\u201d he wrote. He later added that Hutto had \u201cwaited 2yrs to get no where. So, there is nothing telling me that we can\u2019t just start the process all over and pick a different developer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Midway claims that Snyder\u2019s actions constitute bribery and that, upon Midway\u2019s refusal, Snyder took action \u201cto kill the prospective contract between Midway and HEDC.\u201d<\/p>\n

Midway is seeking a jury trial. The full petition can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A representative with the city of Hutto declined to provide a statement on the pending litigation.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston-based development company Midway filed a petition Feb. 18 against the Hutto Economic Development Corporation, Hutto Mayor Mike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,69720,13633,69719,69718,69721,69717,69723,55600,69722],"class_list":{"0":"post-172843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-cottonwood-properties","12":"tag-hutto","13":"tag-hutto-cottonwood","14":"tag-hutto-cottonwood-properties","15":"tag-hutto-economic-development-corporation","16":"tag-hutto-lawsuit","17":"tag-hutto-mayor","18":"tag-midway","19":"tag-mike-snyder"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}