Leaving the ranch, and not for Paraguay:
DALLAS (AP) — President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush have bought a home among business leaders and prominent Republican donors in an affluent North Dallas neighborhood, where they will live after the president leaves office in January.
Laura Bush’s press secretary, Sally McDonough, said Thursday that the Bushes purchased a home in the Preston Hollow area, where some of the state’s wealthiest residents live in some of its most expensive houses.
“We picked out a house, but we don’t have occupancy of it. So as soon as we do, we’ll announce exactly where it is,” Mrs. Bush told NBC News on Thursday. “We’re looking forward to that.”
While the White House has declined to disclose the address, local property records indicate that Robert McCleskey, a Bush family friend from Midland who has done accounting work for the family, recently bought an 8,500-square-foot house with a market value of $2.1 million on a cul-de-sac with about a half-dozen homes.
McCleskey is listed as a trustee on the ranch-style brick house on Daria Place, and he said the house was bought Oct. 1. He said he could not say for whom the home was purchased.
Property records list other homeowners in the neighborhood as Tom Hicks, owner of the Texas Rangers who has a $32.3 million mansion adjacent to the cul-de-sac, billionaire T. Boone Pickens and Republican donor Harold Simmons.
“If he moves next door, we’d love it,” Hicks said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “The secret service would make the neighborhood safer!”
Tom Hicks made him his fortune and now he can make sure he cuts his grass. They’ll probably start plotting a coup on the cul-de-sac. They’re all treasonous bastards. And Crawford was just a prop.
