The Highland Shores well in Highland Village will receive about $310,000 in repairs to improve its pump capacity following city council approval at a Feb. 24 council meeting.

In a nutshell: The city operates five wells that produce about 4.4 million gallons of water per day combined. City officials found that the Highland Shores well was producing 0.87 million gallons per day, about 19% under its design capacity of 1.08 million gallons, Public Works Director Scott Kriston said.

The repair project will cost about $310,000, roughly $10,000 more than the city had budgeted, due to an unforeseen repair to the motor drive shaft, Kriston said. The repairs also include replacing pipe and pump components.

The well was last serviced in 2019, according to city documents.

What's next: Kriston said the work will begin in March and expects the repairs to be completed in late June.

Uncle Mike’s Bistro will be closing in Argyle later this week, co-owner Valarie Gross said. 

The details: Financials are the reason for the departure, but Gross said that they will be back, though no information was given on when or where the business will open again. 

Some background: Uncle Mike’s Bistro serves pancakes, paninis and wraps. Valarie Gross and her husband, Mike Gross, bought Coffee Tree Cafe in Argyle in October 2020 before changing the name to Uncle Mike’s Bistro six months later, according to previous Community Impact reporting. 

The bistro owners renovated the cafe and re-opened with a new late night menu of flatbread pizzas, charcuterie boards, desserts, burgers, wings and sliders on Oct. 4, per previous reporting. 

• 144 Old Town Blvd. N., Argyle

MP Materials Corp. announced it has selected a 120-acre site in Northlake for its 10X campus, a planned large-scale earth magnet manufacturing campus in the Alliance area of Fort Worth.

Located less than 10 miles from another MP Materials’ Independence facility in Fort Worth, the 10X facility is expected to contribute to the company’s total production capacity of approximately 10,000 metric tons of neodymium-iron-boron, or NdFeB, rare earth magnets per year once it is operational, according to a news release.

A closer look: The site, which will be acquired from Hillwood, is within the AllianceTexas development and was selected following a national site evaluation process led by CBRE, a commercial real estate company.

MP Materials is expected to invest more than $1.25 billion into the project and create 1,500 direct manufacturing and engineering jobs with an average annual salary of $74,315, according to previous reporting.

Quote of note: “AllianceTexas continues to attract advanced manufacturing that creates jobs, diversifies our economy and strengthens America’s supply chain,” Hillwood Chair Ross Perot Jr. said.

With a few days left to vote early in the March primaries, more Texans have turned out to the polls this year than in recent primary elections.

The gist: The increase is particularly pronounced among Democratic primary voters, state data shows, with more than twice as many Democratic votes cast by Feb. 24 than in Texas’ last gubernatorial primary.

Zooming in: Statewide, nearly 1.3 million Texans, or about 7% of the state’s 18.7 million registered voters, cast early ballots through Feb. 24, the eighth day of the 11-day early voting period. This is up from about 6% turnout at the same point in 2024 and about 4% turnout in 2022.

In interviews with Community Impact, election analysts attributed Texas’ rising primary voter turnout in part to a slate of competitive, high-profile races on each party’s primary ballot.

At the polls: Early voting in Texas’ Republican and Democratic primaries runs through Feb. 27, and primary election day is March 3. During early voting, registered voters can visit any polling location within their county of residence.