Photo credit: Midland Entrepreneurial Challenge

What to watch: The Midland Development Corporation (MDC) board meets Monday, Aug. 3, and will consider paying $566,701 to the University of Texas Permian Basin (UTPB) to run the 2026-27 Midland Entrepreneurial Challenge, a small-business competition where local entrepreneurs compete to win a share of $500,000.

The board will also consider a five-year extension of MDC’s own office lease at Centennial Tower worth roughly $374,000 through 2031, plus two presentations on economic development research and highway economics.

Editor’s note: The MDC is an economic development corporation created by Midland voters in 2002 that receives a quarter-cent of the city’s sales tax.

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Key points:

  • Midland Entrepreneurial Challenge: The board will consider an agreement with UTPB to run the 2026-27 entrepreneurial challenge, which grants $500,000 in total award money and up to $150,000 per winning business. The agreement also includes up to $66,701 for UTPB’s marketing and administrative costs, paid on a cost-reimbursement basis.

The competition caps at 50 businesses. Entrants must be inside Midland city limits, and winners who sell or move the business out of the city within five years must pay the award back. Registration opens and closes on Sept. 11 for interested businesses, and the 50 participants are selected Sept. 14.

  • Centennial Tower lease: The board will consider a lease amendment that keeps MDC’s 3,324-square-foot office in Centennial Tower through Sept. 30, 2031. Rent starts at $5,955.50 a month this October and steps up each year to $6,509.50 a month in the final year, roughly $374,000 over the five-year term. The agenda packet says that MDC has officed in the tower since 2016.
  • June activity report. MDC Executive Director Sara Harris will give the board the monthly economic development report. The packet’s numbers indicate that sales tax collections are running ahead of last year through the July payment, at $15.4 million for the fiscal year so far compared to $14.2 million for the same period last year.
  • Texas A&M research plan: The Bush School of Government and Public Service at A&M will brief the board on an economic development research plan for Midland.
  • PSP Highway Economics Report: The Permian Strategic Partnership (PSP), the oil-industry-funded regional coalition, will present its highway economics project.