PICTURED: left to right: Chris Bonnett, GM, cbonnett@gilchristautomotive.com, Southwest Ford, Weatherford; Jonathan Franco, GM, jfranco@gilchristautomotive.com, Platinum Ford North; Stephen Gilchrist, Dealer Operator, Gilchrist Automotive; Adam Vincze, GM, avincze@gilchristautomotive.com, Platinum Ford; and Dustin Rodgers, GM, drodgers@gilchristautomotive.com, Triple Crown Ford and Lincoln, Terrell, TX.
TREATBOLDLY. UNTHSC .EDU
When you think of health, you think of wellness. But research and innovation are a big part of how we achieve it. As a premier academic medical center, HSC is committed to the bigger picture of health. And we’re investing in ideas that advance health care and improve outcomes for all people in North Texas.
When we're all connected, we're in it together. HSC. ASK BRAVELY. TREAT BOLDLY.
26 John Goff John Goff’s rags-to-riches story is as American as it gets, to be sure, but his latest work in service to his city, Texas A&M’s forthcoming Tier 1 research campus downtown, might be his pièce de résistance.
32 Biotech in Fort Worth Startup biotech companies have found a rich entrepreneurial ecosystem in Fort Worth, driving growth in the health and lifestyle spaces, as well as economic development for the city.
36 Top Commercial Brokers and Agents of 2023 Whether you’re personally in the market or have a property on the market, you’ll want to refer to these top names in the commercial real estate business.
6 Publisher’s Note
Bizz Buzz
10 Happy 75th: Fort Worth-based Higginbotham begins its yearlong birthday bash by buying a big slab of beef, Snoop Dog, the Grand Champion steer at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo.
12 EO Spotlight: It took a life-changing trip up, down, and around Mount Kilimanjaro — and an abrupt exit from Pier 1 — to steer entrepreneur Brian Hugghins to open a successful audio visual company.
16 Distinctive Style: Whether covering that receding hairline or making a fashion statement, we recommend tossing aside that crummy baseball cap and donning more traditional headwear.
18 Office Space: Take a tour through Valor CEO and unabashed Baylor Bear Joseph DeWoody’s home away from home — his office.
20 Off the Clock: Jordan Scott, overseer and chieftain of the iconic Mama’s Pizza, has a passion that goes far beyond mozzarella and marinara: hunting.
24 Health and Fitness: The brainchild of a former volleyball player, the world’s first smart resistance band (for exercising) came to fruition via the inaugural Techstars Fort Worth accelerator program.
62 Analyze This/Legal and Tax: While property ownership is both a good investment and part of the American Dream, it comes with its fair share of risks.
62 Analyze This/ Economic Development: An update on everything new on the Near Southside, Fort Worth’s growing oasis of thriving and vibrant businesses.
64 1 in 400: An Army veteran, former candidate for the Texas state House, and law school grad, Elizabeth Beck has found her niche: councilwoman. And she ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.
OWNER/PUBLISHER HAL A. BROWN
Being in the publishing business and a lover of Fort Worth, I am an admirer of the late Amon G. Carter, who started with nothing and grew the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to be the largest newspaper in the state. While many have helped put Fort Worth on the map nationally, one could easily argue that no one did more for bringing business to our city than Amon Carter.
Over the years we have highlighted numerous leaders whose business acumen have made a significant impact on Fort Worth. Some of these leaders include Charles Tandy, Ed Bass, and Ross Perot and Mike Berry. The common thread to these leaders is that they all played a major role in helping to develop or revitalize Fort Worth.
Charles Tandy grew a small family leather business into a national name brand, Tandy Corporation, with more than 8,000 stores worldwide. In 1978, Tandy completed the development of an eight-block Tandy Center that housed the new headquarters of Tandy Corporation.
Ed Bass and his brothers established Sundance Square in the late 1970s when downtown was in urban decay. The brothers transformed the north end of downtown into 36 blocks of shops, restaurants, offices and residential and entertainment venues that are the envy of other cities across the U.S.
In 1988, Mike Berry joined Ross Perot Jr. to help launch an industrial airport in north Fort Worth. Thirty-four years later, AllianceTexas, Hillwood’s 27,000-acre master-planned, mixed-use community
is one of the state’s most formidable economic engines.
While many know John Goff as one of Fort Worth’s few billionaires, he has been relatively quiet in Fort Worth, despite his calling Cowtown home for over 40 years. That, however, is about to change.
Crescent Fort Worth, Goff’s new cultural district development, has 168,000 square feet of office space, a luxury hotel, a restaurant, and 175 residences. It will also be the base of operations for Goff’s Crescent Real Estate, Crescent Energy, Goff Capital, and Canyon Ranch.
What Goff is most excited about, and something he believes may be the legacy he leaves Fort Worth, is the conversion of the southeast end of downtown into an innovation district. Goff calls the project “the most significant thing for the city in the last 100 years.”
The nucleus of the district is the estimated $350 million Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus, a three-building complex built on four blocks at the site of the Texas A&M School of Law, providing a range of programs offered by Texas A&M University, Tarleton State University, and several A&M System agencies.
In our interview, Goff mentioned that in real estate and investing one of his most important lessons is that timing matters. Based on his past success, I for one am glad he feels like the time is right for his investment in Fort Worth.
VOLUME 9, NUMBER 1, SPRING 2023
owner/publisher hal a. brown president mike waldum
editorial executive editor john henry creative director craig sylva senior art director spray gleaves advertising art director ed woolf director of photography crystal wise contributing editor brian kendall copy editor sharon casseday advertising main line
817.560.6111 territory manager, fort worth inc. rita hale x133 advertising account supervisor gina burns-wigginton x150 advertising account supervisor marion c. knight x135 account executive tammy denapoli x141 client services manager julia martin x116 marketing director of digital robby kyser marketing director sarah benkendorfer events & partnership manager melissa mitchell content marketing specialist grace behr marketing intern kiana nemati corporate cfo charles newton
To subscribe to Fort Worth Inc. magazine, or to ask questions regarding your subscription, call 817.766.5550 or go to fortworthinc.com.
Fort Worth Inc. is published quarterly by Panther City Media Group LP, 6777 Camp Bowie Blvd, Suite 130, Fort Worth, TX 76116.
Postage Paid at Fort Worth, Texas. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Fort Worth Magazine, 6777 Camp Bowie Blvd, Suite 130, Fort Worth, TX 76116. Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2023. Basic Subscription price: $19.95 per year. Single copy price: $6.99
©2023 Panther City Media Group. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. how to contact us For questions or comments, contact John Henry, executive editor, at 817.560.6111 x179 or via email at jhenry@fwtexas.com.
Rusty Anderson shares considerations for choosing and managing your banking partnerships now, and for the future.
In 2021, Texas Capital Bank set out on its journey to transform commercial banking in Texas. Unbridled innovation, audacious goals, epic success — three aspirations that have driven every initiative the bank has undertaken since.
Rusty Anderson joined Texas Capital Bank at the height of this transformation as Fort Worth Market President, leading the region’s Market Leadership Team. He leverages a background in commercial banking to advise on strategy with a refined focus on Texas markets.
For fast-growing businesses in emerging markets, especially here in Texas, it is certainly possible to outgrow your bank — which is why, according to Anderson,
businesses should look for banking partners that can grow with them throughout their lifecycle.
“Frankly, most of our new clients are those that were with a smaller independent community bank, and their company had simply outgrown their banks capabilities,” Anderson says. “We see this both from a capital perspective and a lack of sophistication in the products and services being delivered to clients like them.”
So how do you know if your bank is equipped to serve your business as it grows? Anderson identified three primary considerations:
1. They truly deliver on the full extent of their capabilities, with consistency.
Touting a roster of products and services is meaningless without relevant application and consistent execution.
“Texas Capital Bank’s truly full-service
capabilities allow us to better serve our clients,” Anderson says.
2. Local teams prioritize your experience and success as a client.
You’ll want your bank to deliver the full roster of services quickly and actively demonstrate “the ability to be responsive and accommodative,” Anderson says. “Full-service is the ability to say ‘yes’ to every request about your banking capabilities.”
3. They’re actively invested in initiatives that improve your experience and outcomes.
Referencing Texas Capital Bank’s transformative investments in technology and talent retention, Anderson stresses the importance of offering effective resolutions to pain points for clients. “It’s the ability to provide,” he says. “Clients need to see and know that you’re an advocate for their positive experiences.”
Looking ahead, Anderson is optimistic about the future of Fort Worth businesses and Texas Capital Bank’s ability to deliver a transformed commercial banking experience to his clients.
As we continue building the gold standard for doing business in Texas, we invite you to experience the next generation of banking. Call Texas Capital Bank’s Fort Worth office at 817.852.4000 or visit texascapitalbank.com to learn more about our services.
Higginbotham, led by chair and CEO Rusty Reid, kicks off its 75th birthday in service to its communities. They'll be back out at the Cowtown Marathon this year, too.
Paul Higginbotham’s once-little
WORDS BY JOHN HENRY
Higginbotham kicked off its landmark birthday by buying a big slab of beef.
The Fort Worth firm, specializing in insurance, wealth management, and human services, cast the winning bid at the Fort Worth Stock Show’s Sale of Champions on the first Saturday of February.
Snoop Dogg, a more than 1,340-pound heavyweight black European Cross, sold for $440,000, blasting away the previous record of $310,000. The proceeds go to Sadie Wampler, 15, of Canyon, Snoop Dogg’s owner.
The steer will undoubtedly be a smiling face at the big yearlong 75th birthday party for the firm founded by Paul C. Higginbotham.
There will be events throughout 2023, but Higginbotham will formally recognize its birthday in the form of what has been
described as a “massive day of service” in April.
The company will kick off its annual Higginbotham Leadership Conference on April 25 by partnering with up to 12 area nonprofits, resulting in what a spokeswoman for the firm called thousands of hours of community service in both deed and monetary donation.
“We’ve enjoyed a long run at Higginbotham,” CEO Rusty Reid says. “To be around 75 years is abnormal. We’re also very, very excited. We just believe it’s important to give back, and we’re real excited to put a step forward in that regard.”
For years, employees have given back through the Higginbotham Community Fund, which has dispersed millions across communities since being created in 2011.
The conference is typically conducted in
Marble Falls, but for the 75th, the company is bringing it to its hometown, Fort Worth. Reid says the four-day gathering will bring 500-600 people to town.
Paul Higginbotham founded the company in 1948 as a small agency in the Riverside neighborhood. He ran it until his death in 1962. His nephew, Bill Stroud, took over operations at the time of his uncle’s death and bought the agency from his aunt, Edith Higginbotham, in 1969.
Stroud sold it to Reid and the company’s other employees in 1989.
Reid, a graduate of North Texas, joined the company in 1986 as its 12th employee. He took control of the company at age 27. He quickly instituted an employee stock ownership plan, which has been credited with the firm’s success and expansion.
In addition to increase productivity, Reid says he noticed soon into his career how equity impacted firms: 1) attracted would-be employees and 2) how they retained people. Employees could earn above and beyond a paycheck.
“I saw at a young age, if you didn’t share equity, there was a better chance they’d become a competitor,” Reid says of employees.
That structure, plus the firm’s singlesource model, a single-source solution for clients’ insurance and financial services, as well as “Day Two Services” that range from loss prevention to contract review and risk management systems, “became the pillars of what launched Higginbotham into what it is today.”
Since 1989, Higginbotham has grown stronger roots in Fort Worth and expanded out far beyond its initial Riverside neighborhood. Reid calls it the SEC expansion, as in the Southeastern Conference. When you’re in Texas, football is never far from the front of mind.
Today, Higginbotham has 87 offices in 15 states, including every Southern state east of Texas, except South Carolina. As an independent broker, it ranks within the top 20 nationwide.
“It is a thrill for me every day to walk among our employees,” Reid says. “I see people who care for their customers. We are grateful to show our many customers across 15 states the values we learned right here in our hometown.”
WORDS BY JOHN HENRY
Since 1954 Texas’ Congressional District 12 has been represented by three people, including Jim Wright, who rose to Speaker of the House in 1987.
U.S. Rep. Kay Granger (R-Fort Worth), the first female mayor of Fort Worth, succeeded Pete Geren in 1997.
In January, she became the first Republican woman to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Granger is in a tricky position as she tries to balance the demands of the House GOP conference with her own responsibility to keep the government running. One important task ahead, she told The Associated Press, is explaining to the public what appropriators do. While the committees are rarely in the spotlight, they are the beating heart of Congress, writing “must-pass” bills that keep the government running.
Decisions about funding levels for almost everything the government pays for — from the military to health care to food safety to federal highways — pass through the hands of appropriators.
Granger is among the most powerful women in Congress. She is not alone at the top. This year, for the first time in history, the four leaders of the two congressional spending committees are women.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) are their counterparts in the other chamber.
At the White House, Shalanda Young is the first Black woman to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
In the past, Granger has pushed back against her party’s right flank. In 2020, she
successfully fended off primary challenger Chris Putnam, who tried to frame her work on the Appropriations Committee as irresponsible even as she drove millions of dollars to build military aircraft in Fort Worth and championed funding for security at the border.
And while she opposed a roughly $1.7 trillion catchall spending package in December, Ms. Granger was directly involved in negotiating an end to the nation’s longest government shutdown in 2019. She has also signaled some resistance to some of the steep cuts to military spending other conservatives have called for.
“We have all worked on important policy issues ranging from defense and national security to transportation to education — all of these issues are important to women, and they will continue to be priorities for us,” Granger said to the New York Times. “We’ll have our work cut out for us over the next two years because my constituents are demanding we find reasonable, sensible, and responsible ways to get control of runaway spending in Washington.”
In January, Granger and Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Fort Worth) were among those in attendance for a reception for Texas A&M guests in town to unveil the name of the Tier 1 campus planned for downtown.
The 80-year-old Granger, an enthusiastic supporter of the A&M expansion project, made what appeared to be some news by saying she would remain in Congress until the project is complete.
“This will be something we will always remember,” Granger said. “A great negotiation is one where each partner secretly thinks he made a better deal than the other one. Texas A&M and Fort Worth are both getting an incredible deal.”
Dickies moving its headquarters into downtown.
Dickies — then Williamson & Dickie — constructed its new three-story factory south of downtown in 1924 for $85,000.
That’s roughly $1.5 million today.
The company will invest $4.5 million to renovate the 84,000-square-foot, six-floor, mixed-use complex adjacent to the Tower condominium high-rise at 500 Taylor St. to use as its world headquarters.
SADA Capital Partners, an Illinois-based capital and asset management company, and SADA Tower LLC, a Texas limited liability partnership, have owned the Tower and Tower Annex since June, its first purchases in Texas.
“Dickies has been a household name in Fort Worth for a very long time, amplified by the opening of its namesake multipurpose arena a few years ago,” says Shaukat S. Chaudhry, CEO and managing director of SADA Capital Partners. “We cannot wait to finish our improvements to serve their employees and bring new destination restaurant and retail establishments to the area.”
Dickies has called Fort Worth its home since 1922 when C.N. Williamson, E.E. Dickie, and C.D. Williamson took over the U.S. Overall Company.
North Carolina-based VP Corp, an apparel manufacturer, which also owns Vans, North Face, and Timberland, paid $820 million for the company in 2017.
Dickies is the largest new tenant signed in downtown Fort Worth since Oncor relocated to 777 Main St. in 2020, according to Stream Realty Partners, which represented the landlord and Dickies.
The most pivotal moment of Brian Hugghins’ journey to this time and place was a 2019 trip to Tanzania for a more than 19,000-foot climb up the majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak.
One caveat: He had never done anything like this before.
Hugghins, CEO of H Customs Audio and Visual, loves adventure, but this seven-day trip was life-changing.
“I took the longest route,” he says. “I wanted to see every single part of Kilimanjaro, not just go up and down to say I was there. It completely changed my life. I thought about business, life, everything. I met [wife] Samaa on that trip. I joined EO on that trip. I’ve been refocusing my business. I started working on growth and not just work for 15 years in electronics. I’ve really been working on being an entrepreneur, and now I really feel like one.”
Hugghins, a Texas A&M graduate, scratched his entrepreneurial itch, first leaving a job in information technology with Accenture, which took him globetrotting, and another designing and building design sets for Pier 1’s photo studio.
He spent literally one year at Pier 1, taken aback when management informed him of his anniversary. “I stood there and thought, ‘You just lose track of time.’”
“It took me about 10 minutes, and I said, ‘This isn’t what I want to do,’ and I went in and quit.”
On the spot.
“It was all or nothing,” he says. He had been doing audio/visual installs on the side. He enjoyed it more than anything else.
Brian Hugghins and H Customs Audio and Visual specialize in hearing and seeing.
WORDS BY JOHN HENRY IMAGE BY CRYSTAL WISE
home and commercial customized audio/visual systems. He started working out of his garage and doing all the work himself. Today, he employs about 10 with a roster of contractors.
H Customs commercial jobs include two restaurants, Don Artemio and Quince, a job he partnered on with Patrick West of Expert Media Solutions. We met up with him at 1116 Indoor Golf Club on Bryant Irvin on a job just completed.
FW Inc.: H Customs is actually a division of your Otium Group Inc.
BH: Yes, Otium Group Inc., which is comprised of H Customs Audio and Visual, H Customs Security [alarm systems and surveillance], and Otium Shades.
FW Inc.: You mentioned Otium is a Greek word.
BH: A Greek word for all the fun you do later in life with all the money you made while working.
FW Inc.: Do you remember your net revenue your first year?
BH: About $60,000. [Laughs] We grew rapidly. Within 10 years we were doing $2 million [in sales]. I love the brainstorming process. Designing something completely custom tailored to you and your home is what sets us apart from the big box retailers.
H Customs Audio and Visual was born. Here, he lives and breathes what he loves best: designing, building, and installing
“It took me about 10 minutes and I said, ‘This isn't what I want to do,’ and I went in and quit. It was all or nothing.”
CELEBRATE AT THE TARRANT COUNTY LUNCHEON MARCH 3, 2023, AT THE WORTHINGTON RENAISSANCE FORT WORTH HOTEL
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) continues to be the No. 1 killer of women – claiming more lives than all forms of cancer…combined The reality is – nearly 45% of women over the age of 20 are living with some form of CVD. Women experience unique life stages that put them at increased risk of developing CVD over the course of their lifetime.
The Go Red for Women movement empowers women to take charge of their health by learning their family history, knowing their numbers, and understanding the warning signs and risk factors for heart disease or stroke. Taking these proactive steps could mean more precious time for women. Time to be sisters, partners, mothers, leaders, and friends.
Together, we can inspire significant impact on the American Heart Association’s mission to prevent heart disease and stroke in women. Let us put our hearts into it and Go Red for Women. Since 2004, the Go Red for Women movement has had a profound impact on women’s health around the globe. Today, we are doubling down, focusing on:
We Will Champion Life-saving Discoveries for Women and by Women Women continue to be underrepresented in both research and in STEM fields, as well as underfunded to the detriment of society. The American Heart Association addresses this through Research Goes Red, STEM Goes Red and efforts to increase funding and research dedicated to better understanding cardiovascular disease in women.
MENTAL WELL-BEING
We Will Help Women Find Their Best Self in Every Stage of Life
Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression, and through the pandemic, 80% said their load increased at home and work, with many planning to quit their jobs due to poor work-life balance. The Association addresses this through solutions that promote positive well-being and support across each season of life.
MATERNAL HEALTH
We Will Stand Up for Moms
The US has one of the worst maternal mortality rates among developed countries, and pregnancy-related deaths are on the rise. The reason? Cardiovascular disease. Black women pay the highest price followed by Native American, Asian and Hispanic women. As champions for health equity, we will address this through increasing access to healthcare and addressing underlying issues that contribute to inequities in education, resources, support and more. The 2023 community volunteer chairs of the Tarrant County Go Red for Women movement are Jennifer Chavez and Becky Tucker. Jennifer Chavez currently serves as the Chief Nursing Officer for Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth and Becky Tucker serves as the system senior vice president of Channel Integration for Texas Health Resources. “It is a privilege to chair the Go Red Movement this year,” said Jennifer Chavez. “Go Red for Women is bigger than wearing red and sharing heart health facts. It is about supporting all women in taking charge of their own heart health, as well as the health of those they can’t bear to live without. Making a commitment to your health isn’t something you have to do alone either, I will champion our community in Tarrant County and beyond to Go Red together!”
This year’s Go Red for Women luncheon, held at the Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth Hotel on Friday, March 3, 2023, features health screenings, fun activities, a silent auction, keynote speaker and more. Individual luncheon tickets are available for $500, with tables (10 seats) and sponsorships starting at $5,000. Please scan to learn more and reserve your seat today!
WORDS BY SHILO URBAN
Whether you’re heading into a board meeting or out for a night on the town, a dapper hat adds another dimension to your style. Finishing your look with the right hat was a necessity for most men of the modern era until John F. Kennedy doffed his topper, and the rest of the world followed suit. Today, only 11% of people wear hats daily, 51% of which are baseball caps. Sporting a fashionable hat in 2023 makes you stand out with an air of sartorial self-assurance. From smart-casual to semi-formal, these five styles are solid bets for any Fort Worth businessman or woman who wants to take their headgear game to the next level. Just remember: No matter which design you choose to complete your outfit, the key is to wear it with confidence.
Fedora With a natty, old-school aesthetic that’s decidedly masculine, the fedora had its heyday from the Roaring ’20s to the 1950s. The vintage shape carries a touch of mystery and recalls the power players of the era — gangsters like Al Capone and stars like Frank Sinatra. Its enduring popularity belies the fact that the fedora can be difficult to pull off if you don’t have the swagger of Tom Landry, Leon Bridges, or Indiana Jones. The versatile hat can be dressed up or down, but it generally reads best when paired with a stylish outfit — go too casual and you’ll look like another hipster who’s trying too hard. People with smaller features may also want to consider the trilby, a fedora-adjacent hat with a shorter brim and crown (think Bruno Mars and Inspector Clouseau of “The Pink Panther”).
In 1922, the hat-bashing got out of hand in Manhattan and spawned the “Straw Hat Riot,” an eight-day frenzy that led to numerous injuries and arrests.
Bowler (or Derby) Replacing the top hat as the headwear du jour in the late 1800s, this sturdy felt hat symbolized the electrifying modernization taking place during the Victorian era . The bowler’s short, rounded crown and sleek brim appealed to factory workers and the bourgeoisie alike; it was the hat for every man. Called the derby in America, the style spread through the Wild West and gained adherents among both lawmen and outlaws. From Butch Cassidy to the London Bobbies, from the “tramp” Charlie Chaplin to upper-class gents in finance — this no-nonsense hat was adopted by many. These days, the bowler oozes antiquated charm and eclectic character. It looks better on more angular faces and when worn with a swish suit or tuxedo.
Cowboy Hat Can you wear a cowboy hat with a suit?
You can in Fort Worth. While this iconic style was born and bred for roughand-tumble ranch work, a few tweaks make it suitable for an evening at Bass Hall or any other semi-formal event. For best results, opt for a fine black felt hat with a classic cattleman crease. Choose a suit in a subtle, neutral color like gray or black, which won’t compete with the statement piece atop your head. Adding a vest will amplify the formality of your attire, as will a pocket square in a congruent color. Straw hats are traditionally only worn in the summertime, but when it’s 85 degrees in October — you get a pass. No one’s going to knock your unseasonal headpiece off and stomp it, as was the custom in many American cities a century ago.
Flat Cap On the casual end of the spectrum, the flat cap is an upgraded option for those who usually wear a baseball hat and want to kick things up a notch. You might also know this low-profile style as an ivy cap, golf cap, or cabbie cap. Add a button on top and it becomes a newsboy; stiffen the material to turn it into the more elegant ascot. The flat cap has been around since the 1300s when it first appeared in northern England. It’s still a British mainstay, gracing the heads of David Beckham and King Charles III — as well as Brad Pitt, Idris Elba, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Often crafted of tweed, wool or cotton, the flat cap works for a dressy weekend excursion in a sharp sweater or blazer. Just be sure to choose a hat fabric different from your jacket so your outfit isn’t too matchy-matchy.
Amon Carter Shady Oaks Hat Also called the Banker’s Special, LBJ hat, and cowboy fedora — this dashing style was designed (in Fort Worth) by and for the modern businessman of the urban West. Dreamed up in 1920 by Amon Carter and Tom Peters of Peters Brothers Hats, it boasted the finest silver-belly beaver felt and a subdued silhouette compared to the cowboy hat. Carter gave away Shady Oaks hats by the thousands to every dignitary and VIP who visited Fort Worth, and by the 1930s, it was worn across the country by wealthy oilmen and executives with discriminating taste. Every hatmaker mimicked the design and gave it their own name; Stetson made the Open Road while Resistol sold the San Antonio. But they all harkened back to Fort Worth, and today this distinguished local style evokes a smart, unique fashion sense and an enduring love for the 817. You’ll find an engaging selection of beautifully refurbished Amon Carter hats at Chieffalo Americana on Camp Bowie Boulevard.
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Valor CEO Joseph DeWoody, a former Baylor Bear, opens his office to us.
WORDS
Joseph DeWoody left Fort Worth for college in Waco and returned six years later as a football letterman and an MBA in hand.
In 2018, after 10 years in the oil and gas business, DeWoody and Clinton DuBose founded Valor, a specialty asset management company with expertise in mineral rights management and accounting-based software solutions.
They are both members of Mensa and have combined to guide a flourishing young company, which in 2022 was selected “Small Business of the Year” by the Fort Worth Chamber.
DeWoody says the company just hit $240 million a year in client managed revenue with properties in 32 states.
“I’m proud of that,” he says.
DeWoody says he had an aptitude for entrepreneurism, which he studied as an undergrad at Baylor. He also had a model as a businessman: his father, whom he worked for in the oil and gas space. Michael DeWoody is president of Pendragon Oil Co.
“I’ve always been that way,” DeWoody says of his entrepreneurial inclination. “We were already in the space and understood the mineral rights market. It became apparent to me there was a need in the market to better serve these owners of mineral rights assets and fractional oil and gas assets. We applied technology and innovation to the space. We moved down that path to create software products and married that with professional services. It’s been a good run.”
DeWoody welcomed us into his office last month to take a look at the various ornaments that bring a certain character to the place.
1
Joseph DeWoody walked on the Baylor football team as an offensive lineman under Kevin Steele. After 2 ½ years, he was put on scholarship by head coach Guy Morriss, the former TCU football player. The scars on his helmet tell the story of battle in the football trenches.
2
DeWoody was part of the Baylor offensive line for four years. He was recruited by Baylor but ultimately walked on. Here is a picture of the 2004 team. The day after National Signing Day [when he wasn’t signed], Tommy Frazier [former Nebraska QB and then-Baylor coach] called me to say they still wanted me.”
3
Yes, DeWoody is a fan of George Washington, father of country. However, he’s also related to him. This piece of George W. I “makes me smile.” DeWoody discovered he was in the Washington family tree through a book he keeps in his office. “Second cousin, 10 times removed,” he says.
4
Speaking of things that make DeWoody smile: his office door, which doubles as a gallery for the art of his children, William and Sarah Beth. It’s clear that among all the nifty things in this office, this is his joy.
5 DeWoody, Clifton DuBose, and Jammer Moncrief among others, were involved in the production of the documentary “Tennessee Whiskey: The Dean Dillon Story.” Dillon was the writer behind hits performed by George Strait, George Jones, Kenny Chesney, Brooks and Dunn, LeeAnn Womak, and, of course, Chris Stapleton. A poster adorns a wall.
6
A blossoming oil well made out of bullet casings and a picture of DeWoody and his Baylor offensive line teammates sit side by side.
7
DeWoody hasn’t strayed from his roots. He’s a proud graduate of Southwest Christian, as these custom-made boots demonstrate. Today, he is on the school’s board.
8
DeWoody is a member of the Stock Show Syndicate and his wife, Kimberly, is the finance director of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Pictures here show the couple with the steers they helped sell.
BY JOHN HENRY IMAGES BY CRYSTAL WISE
My first order of business before, well, I order is asking Mama’s Pizza chieftain Jordan Scott where exactly the revered Fort Worth institution stands in the pie marketplace since he put it on a growth trajectory after taking over the business almost 20 years ago.
It’s as good as it’s ever been with Mama’s again expanding past the territorial juris-
diction of Greater Fort Worth. In the past, a relative lifetime ago, there were stores catering to the collegians in Abilene Christian, College Station, and Lubbock. Today, 15 stores are standing — or soon will be — in the Greater Fort Worth area, one in Dallas, and another in Houston. Two more, Jordan says, are planned for the Space City.
That’s not a problem, Houston, this iconic brand (well, iconic to us) moving
into the neighborhood. The product is as fulfilling as a Bible verse. Yes, the Mama’s experience is somewhat religious. And, of course, the characters who crossed its doorframes, from the owners to the people who gormandized the righteous product (and a little — or a lot of — beer, perhaps), are as legendary as any others who have roamed these parts.
Four of the stores are corporately owned. Eleven are owned by franchise operators, including, yes, the store in Houston. Jordan says his goal is 15 franchised stores, so, he has four to go.
A query followed: Why cap it at 15 if there’s demand for more?
“Well,” Jordan says, “I want to play video poker, too.”
One thing to know about Jordan Scott: He is not an all-work, no-play kind of guy. Living a complete, well-rounded life
includes a number of other things not called pepperoni and all the glorious things that can go with it on top of a pizza.
Skiing, for instance. He and wife Nicole are taking a couple of trips a year to do that. Fishing. There can be lots of that, but a trip to Port O’Connor on the Texas coast with his dad, Tim, and good buddy Cole Durham is on the calendar annually. In the past, the three would take off for Alaska one year and Canada the next in search of fish. But the price is better and the fishing as good in Texas, Scott says, though salmon and halibut not the targets.
And there’s hunting, of course.
“Did I mention video poker,” Jordan kids.
It’s actually not really a joking matter, this video poker. Jordan enjoys playing and competing. Gambling in Las Vegas is certainly an avocation. Blackjack and craps were, and still are, go-tos. But he remembers not long ago seeing a gentleman making a career — or let’s call it several hours — at a video poker machine.
Jordan’s curiosity got the best of him.
“I went up to him and said, ‘What are you playing?’” Jordan says. “He told me and said it had the best odds.”
The gentlemen sent him a book, a Mensa guide of some sort on casino gambling.
“I read the book,” Jordan says. “Now I’m addicted.”
Jordan has had a nice little run on video poker, but, ultimately, it’s hunting that makes demands on his free time. He has less of it these days, now that he’s married and raising a little girl, Leighton.
But hunting is a passion that takes up some of his energy. Jordan has a lot of that, energy. He’s really an avid sportsman. Jordan hunts birds, too. Talking about his late bird dog almost brings him to tears. He has constant reminders of her all around his home office with pictures sitting in a couple of different corners.
He got hooked on deer hunting through Chris Farkas, his godfather and second owner of Mama’s. Farkas and his brother bought the pizzeria, originally located across the street from Texas Wesleyan, on East Rosedale, from the original owner, Ed Stebbins, whose mother-in-law was “Mama.” Farkas, who died in 2003, left the business to Jordan.
As an aside, Farkas, too, had his obses-
sions. One was studying archaeology and anthropology with an interest in the various techniques used to produce usable tools from various types of stone, like flint weapons, arrow points, spear points, and most other instruments made of stone.
Farkas also, ahem, had a passion for TCU athletics, so much so that it caused him and TCU some grief when it was uncovered that pizza for football players had a little sumpin’ sumpin’ under the pizza. Some extra greens, if you will, for a game well played, perhaps. That’s all water under the bridge today, all that stuff of 40 years ago.
It was Farkas, however, who introduced Jordan to deer hunting. Farkas took him to his ranch in Junction, Texas. He was somewhere between 18 and 20 years old and then a student at Texas Wesleyan, where he played baseball. Jordan later transferred and graduated from TCU, though not exactly on time. (There’s a story there, too. Just hold on a second.)
“The adrenaline rush when you shoot your first deer,” Jordan says, trailing off, distracted by his iPhone which he’s looking for a picture of a favorite kill. He’s actually looking for a few of them. I’m distracted by the aroma of pizza, which he has offered me.
“I think I shot it in the afternoon. I needed to get back that night for school the next morning. I was able to drive six hours and not even bat an eye of sleep because I
was so pumped up.”
How keen was he on this new hobby? Even college graduation took a back seat to it. Jordan was set to graduate from TCU but couldn’t make the ceremony because of a hunting trip to Germany.
“Here’s the funny part,” Jordan recalls. “I went into the [adviser’s] office and said, ‘Hey, I’m supposed to graduate in December, but I can’t.’ She looked at me and said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I’m supposed to go to Germany, hunting. Is there any way I can graduate in the spring. She said, ‘I’ve been here 27 years. You’re the first person to ask me not to graduate.’ But she said, ‘Sure, OK.’”
That trip, too, was set up by Farkas, who also served on the city’s Sister City International delegations to, among others, Budapest, Hungary, and Trier, Germany. He chaired the initial Sister City hunting exchange. Fort Worth exchanged hunting trips with Budapest and Trier.
Jordan tagged along on many of those trips and continued to do so even after there was no affiliation with the trips and the Sister Cities. He estimates his hunting trips to Hungary at 10. Lots of Russian boars — not boors, though we certainly know they exist — and red stags.
In Budapest he was introduced to all the ceremony and tradition of hunting. There, on your first kill, you are given a twig off a tree dipped in blood to stick in your hat. The same in Africa. That’s where Jordan asked Nicole for her hand. What better way to do that than to hunt afterward. And she fell in love with it, too, there.
His office at home is full of taxidermied heads from his travels. You’ll see the skull of a warthog or two, too. Jordan is also fair. He doesn’t hunt high fences ranges and no big game in Africa.
“I don’t shoot cats, elephants, or
giraffes,” he says. “Those animals are better alive than dead. It’s all plains game animals.”
“And we eat it all,” Nicole says. “Or we donate it to local villages.”
Along those lines, Jordan is adamant that the springbok and gemsbok are the best things you will ever eat. “It’s so much better than beef.”
Jordan has been all over the world harvesting wild food (and sometimes just as a nomad with no permanent abode might have done it) and in every province in Canada, except Alberta. Saskatchewan, the deer capital of the world, is where he harvested his most prized beast.
Locating and shooting a double down tine mule deer is a one-in-2.5-million proposition, but, sure enough, Jordan found him in Saskatchewan, a place he doesn’t hit much anymore for the reasons you would expect from a native Texan accustomed to his climes.
It’s too cold. “It’s a beating.”
The Canadian province, though, is the location of one of his best hunting stories.
“The first year I go up there, it’s negative 25 for a high. Fahrenheit. That’s the real
temperature,” he says. “Not wind chill. I’m in the hunting blind with like this full-bodied sleeping bag, like, where there’s sleeves for your arms and legs. I’m up there for a couple of hours and decide to eat the sandwich I brought. It was rock hard. Frozen. My soda: frozen solid.
“That’s how cold it is. So, that afternoon, here comes a pretty good-sized deer. I go to look at him through my binocular lens, and you start to breathe pretty hard. Well, the fog from my breathing gets onto the lens. Freezes instantly. My dumb ass decides to pull a ‘Christmas Story’ and licks the lens. My tongue freezes to the lens.”
He laughs at the memory. So, do I, of course. Who doesn’t laugh at another’s expense?
“I tell the old man and woman I’m renting a room from the story, and she’s just dying. She says, ‘You’re the biggest entertainment we’ve had in 25 years.’”
Now you can see why Jordan Scott doesn’t want too many stores to oversee. He’s got things to do.
Techstars Fort Worth member Stefan Weiss’ resistance band is ‘like a personal trainer standing right next to you.‘
WORDS BY JOHN HENRY
Aesop, that clever storyteller from yesteryear, is believed to have been among the first to conceive of what would evolve into the Latin phrase mater atrium necessitas.
Aesop wrote of a crow dying of thirst who came upon a pitcher with a little water in it. A problem immediately presented itself: The pitcher was high and had a narrow neck. The crow tried everything, but he couldn’t reach the water.
Then a lightbulb went off. The crow picked up small pebbles and dropped them into the pitcher. With each pebble, the water rose a little higher until finally it was near enough so he could drink.
In a pinch, a good use of our wits may help us out.
In other words, the mother of invention is necessity.
Fast-forward more than 2,000 years.
Stefan Weiss, a native of Germany now living in Amsterdam, was a former volleyball player, still a young man, and fit. Until he took an internship at a hotel, he was a gym rat. However, then he got a job — that internship.
A problem immediately presented itself.
“I couldn’t find a way to keep myself fit,” Weiss, 33, says. “I tried a lot of things: app, running, bodyweight training, gadgets. I turned to resistance bands: super portable and light weight, and you can do a lot of exercises with them that you know from a gym — rowing, butterfly reverse, butterfly, banded push-ups, squats, etc.
“But you don’t see your progress — you never know how much load you are actually moving, and every day the weight feels different.”
He solved the problem by founding STRAFFR.
STRAFFR is the world’s first smart resistance band, the company says. A sensor in the band tracks power and range of motion of every move. The band then sends the data through an app to provide live feedback.
“It’s just like having a personal trainer standing right next to you,” Weiss says.
Weiss was a member in the inaugural Techstars Fort Worth accelerator program for entrepreneurs in physical health.
The program is designed for companies that have a focus in physical health, health sciences, rehabilitation, physical therapy, osteopathic care and musculoskeletal conditions, mobility, performance, sports, exercise, medicine, software, hardware, digital health, wearables, and innovations in human movement.
“The experience [at Techstars] has been great,” Weiss says. “During the program we learned a lot on how to improve our company and streamline processes. We got connected to mentors who helped us with refining our business model, connecting us to the first retail chains, refining our pitch, and many more things that helped us to accelerate our company.
“Even after the program, a lot of mentors are still supporting us with their network and time. We are currently raising another round of funding to enter the U.S. market, and we get a lot of support from the Techstars network.”
The cost of the band is $100. Weiss says the company has done more than $360,000 in sales since launching in Germany in 2021. The company recently got into the Dubai Duty Free store, he says.
The
facility
impact of John Goff’s work to bring a Texas A&M
Tier 1 research
to Fort Worth could be as great as any of those brought by those other visionary civic leaders who came before him.
More than 40 years ago, John Goff departed Houston for a trip up Interstate 45 carrying all that he owned in a U-Haul rental truck.
His most valuable possessions were his hopes and dreams.
He had brought all of it to Fort Worth.
Today, decades later, Goff is recognized as having achieved unique stature in American business, a bold, visionary real estate developer and billionaire investor.
He did it by being a keen, far-sighted observer of markets and market forces.
With Richard Rainwater, whom Goff calls “a brother, father, partner all wrapped into one,” he built and sold Crescent Real Estate Equities to Morgan Stanley for $6.5 billion.
He bought it back in distress two years later for a fraction of what he sold it for.
The highly anticipated opening of the Crescent Fort Worth, a hotel and office development emerging in the Cultural District, is slated for later this year. The development will house Crescent Real Estate, Crescent Energy, Goff Capital, and Canyon Ranch, the luxury resort and wellness brand founded by Mel Zuckerman 40 years ago.
Along with 168,000 square feet of office space, the project will include a 200-room luxury hotel, an upscale restaurant, and 175 high-end residences.
The restaurant will also include a bar
called Ralph’s, a request of investor Mary Ralph Lowe.
He likes to say that “I would love to think he thought I was really smart” when Rainwater charged him with investing $50 million in 1987, “but the reality is he knew the stock market was so oversold that any dummy could put money to work and it’d work out.”
Goff found out Rainwater’s plans for him as an investor while he was telling someone over the phone.
“And then I didn’t sleep for three weeks.”
Yet, to be sure, he is shrewd, astute, and sharp-witted, and, even then, 35 years ago he could “rip apart a financial statement
and quickly assess a company’s prospects.
Goff made Roger Staubach, a personal hero while growing up, a winner in real estate, and he was involved with Rainwater, Rusty Rose, and George W. Bush, among others, buying the Texas Rangers, a distressed asset at the time, from Eddie Chiles. Rick Scott, today a senator from Florida, started Columbia/HCA with an investment from the team of Rainwater and Goff. Eddie Lampert, brought in from Goldman Sachs, started his highly successful investment fund in those same downtown offices.
Goff, 67, is also impeccably kind and thoughtful. And he has a pleasant nature that manifests in good humor, obviously.
in the presence of greatness, a leader who has gotten results with a Midas touch and a great communicator who operates at the highest levels of sincerity.
In that setting, a quick thought comes to mind: If there is a leadership void in our national politics — ahem, there is — this is the guy to bridge it.
This is the guy.
I didn’t know exactly what I was buying into, but it was a lot of work, and still is. I’m hopeful this is part of my legacy that I can give back to the city.
He enjoys recalling the moment he decided to switch majors at the University of Texas. He had more than years in as an electrical engineering student and was interning at Dow Chemical. He was on a design team for a new plant in Brazil. During a meeting on the project, he recalls, the engineering team was on one side of the table, and the business guys and lawyers financing the project were on the other.
“It was like a light switch,” Goff says. “I realized during that meeting that I needed to be on the other side of the table. What they were doing was a lot more interesting than what I was doing.
“And I felt I was more in line with their personality. [The engineers] were really nice people, but I just don’t know if I wanted to hang out with them all the time.”
He went back to Austin and became an accounting student. UT, then and now, has one of the best accounting programs in the country. In his class, he recalls, was Gary Kelly, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines, and Phillip Green, CEO of Frost Bank.
Whether the hand of destiny or simply Lady Luck interceding, that metaphoric fork in the road and Goff’s choice made all the difference.
Sitting across from him in a conference room, there is an aura of greatness that remains in one place in the air. I am sitting
Socrates identified the ideal leaders for the body politic as the philosophers. Their natural abilities and virtues are what is necessary to rule well, he argued. They despise falsehood, are quick learners, have a good memory, they’re moderate, courageous, and are pleasant. They have a pleasant nature.
“I have been asked to,” Goff says of running for public office, “and thought about it — for seconds — but I don’t think I have the temperament, and besides … I love what I do.”
That he is civic-minded is indisputable, however.
Goff stepped out into the public realm at the outset of the pandemic at the request of Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, who asked him to co-chair, with Elaine Agather, the committee to assist local business.
City staff and leaders “brainstormed on what should do,” says Price of what became Fort Worth Now, “to help us get through the pandemic and how we could be more robust when we got out. I said, ‘I’ve got the right person.’”
Goff won’t say yes, she was told. He just doesn’t get out front like that.
“I said, ‘He might.’”
Says Goff: “I didn’t know exactly what I was buying into, but it was a lot of work, and still is,” he says. “I’m hopeful this is part of my legacy that I can give back to the city.”
He and Agather, of J.P. Morgan Chase, assembled a group of leaders from all walks of life to be part of the committee. That committee took charge of doing all the “obvious things,” like distributing masks, facilitating vaccination dispersal, and gen-
erally breaking through logjams wherever they were. It also assisted in getting money to businesses that were suffering under the strain of the pandemic and its associated shutdowns.
Goff personally gave $100,000 to Fort Worth Now. Jon Brumley, his good friend and business partner, heard that Goff had made the donation and matched it. Other benefactors, including J.P. Morgan Chase, came forward.
“Pretty soon we had a budget to work from,” he says.
It wasn’t long before Goff was thinking about the committee’s charge to make the city more robust coming out of the pandemic.
“The single-most important thing I realized we could do is bring in a Tier 1 research university to the city. Long term that would have more impact than anything.”
Fort Worth was the largest city in the nation without one.
Of all the deals Goff has manufactured over the decades, the concordat with Texas A&M to bring a Tier 1 research campus to Fort Worth — let’s face it, when you strike a deal with an Aggie, it’s more like a covenant — might be his pièce de resistance.
It’s that big a deal for the city, likely ultimately ranking right up there with the U.S. Army’s arrival, the county election, the coming of the railroad, and TCU driving stakes in the ground.
Its leader is John Goff.
“This is really a legacy for me. I want to see it through.”
In 1941, Dow Chemical embarked on building new plants in the Houston metro area. One problem came with expansion plans: How to provide accommodations for the thousands of current employees and the thousands who would follow.
The company found a solution. It would build a new town on the old Lake Jackson Plantation, south of Houston. The location was ideal for offering protection from Gulf storms.
It would be the “City of Enchantment,” and for one guy raised there it was indeed enchanting.
“It was a great place to grow up,” says Goff of his childhood hometown. “My
parents never knew where I was. There was nothing fancy there at all. One drugstore. One little grocery story and a more legitimate grocery store. One place to buy school clothes.
“We had a blast. Oyster Creek runs through town. I lived on the creek, fishing and hunting. There was a lot of goofing around and getting into trouble, though there wasn’t much trouble to get into.”
Each of the streets in town, the “ways,” led to the downtown area. “Center Way” is in the center of town. “Circle Way” loops around the business district. And, the town’s designers were clever, too. There was a “This Way” and a “That Way.” A church was, appropriately, located on “His Way.”
Goff’s parents met at Austin College in Sherman. Janice Blackburn was the daughter of a hardware store owner in town, Blackburn Hardware. In addition to hardware, Goff recalls, that his maternal grandfather sold coal and ice cream, too. Janice and Charlie Goff eloped to Dallas before she finished her degree.
Charlie Goff was at Austin College on an athletics scholarship, back when the school offered scholarships for sports. Charlie had a hall-of-fame career there, playing baseball, basketball, and football.
possessions, an autobiography his paternal grandfather authored.
“I don’t think he ever went to school, but somehow he learned to read and write,” Goff says. “I have it. I’ve given it to all my kids. He had no formal training, but it’s written in incredible penmanship.”
It’s all in one sentence, he says. “There are no periods or commas.”
“I want to do something with it. It could be a movie. It’s fascinating.”
It is indeed a compelling story.
It tells of the journey of his grandfather and great uncle traversing the Deep South by horseback from Tennessee and into Texas in search of Col. Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, ultimately the last conquerors of the Spanish empire in America. The
days or weeks.
“They met some guys who told them, ‘If you really want to make some money, go to Mexico. There are free range cattle you can gather and bring up [to Texas] and sell for a lot of money.’”
So, off they went, south of the border, in search of money and glory, not the glory they sought in Cuba, but glory nonetheless. The brothers eventually traded in their horses for guns and hopped on a train. They jumped off somewhere near Vera Cruz.
“They never left,” Goff says.
Goff’s father was one of 10 children born to his grandparents, many of them in Mexico. Spanish was their first language. Goff isn’t sure exactly what kind of intermingling there was in Mexico. He believes, though he isn’t certain, that his grandmother, like his grandfather, was an American living in Mexico.
That was a path the father had in mind for his youngest son, too.
Charlie graduated in 1940 just as the war was heating up on both shores. His father, with a new wife and soon with children, found a good paying job in Lake Jackson at the Dow plant, where he worked his way from entry level in the utility department to manager of material handling for the company’s Texas division.
Goff jokes that he was an unplanned addition to the family. He has an older brother, Charles Jr., now in his early 80s, and two older sisters, Jan and Jill, who both went to TCU.
At his home sits one of Goff’s most prized
demise of the USS Maine on the shores of Spanish Cuba had put the U.S. on a war footing in the late 1800s.
The Goff brothers wanted in.
“He [Goff’s grandfather] had this dream to ride with Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders,” Goff says. “I’m not sure he ever met with Teddy Roosevelt, but they met the leadership of the group and told them they wanted to fight with them. Somehow, they found out his age.”
The brothers were turned away, informed that they were too young to join the American war effort against Spain. Dejected, they rode off, finding the banks of the San Antonio River, where they camped for several
However, he says he still has many relatives living in Mexico. The grandfather worked on a coffee plantation as a laborer and eventually bought 10 acres for a banana plantation. “That’s what they lived on,” Goff says. Any sense of enchantment in Mexico came to a screeching halt as the Mexican Revolution heated up, Villa and Zapata leading freedom fighters against the dictator, Porfirio Diaz.
“Pancho Villa comes in and raids the farm and takes animals,” Goff says, recalling the details of Pancho raiding his grandfather’s farm, as told in the book. “It’s the craziest story.”
Ultimately, it all became too much. The grandfather sent Goff’s father, then a young boy, and his other siblings back to the states, all transported by a military boat to Galveston.
His father was raised by two older sisters in the Fifth Ward of Houston, though at some point he moved back to Mexico.
“He was tough as nails,” Goff says of his father. “He grew up in a very bad part
of town, but he was a good athlete and went to school at Austin College.”
All of the family eventually moved back to Texas, settling in Angleton in Brazoria County when Charlie was 12, according to his 2007 obituary.
Athletics was the same route to university the father wanted Goff to take. Goff says, while he enjoyed sports — and still does — going to school to play sports wasn’t an option. He had bigger concerns than a batting average.
“I was serious about my studies. At the time, I was scared and ambitious. My dad was at an age that he was talking about retiring. He never made much money. I knew I was going to be on my own. I was hungry, ambitious, and scared all wrapped up into one. I wanted to go study, get out of school, and make money.”
Hungry, ambitious, and scared much like his grandfather going to Mexico generations before him.
Goff had always been ambitious and industrious. He hustled. Not in the sense that one is dishonest or cunning. Like Charlie Hustle. He busted his ass.
He remembers as a young boy he would pick pecans in Lake Jackson and sell them to the local grocer. “He would cull through my sack of pecans on the basket of my bicycle because he would worry that I had put rocks or a brick at the bottom to weigh them,” he says laughing at the memory.
He also mowed grass for neighbors. At 10 or 11 years old, he did odd jobs, like painting and cleaning the pool at the apartment complex owned by the father of his older sister’s boyfriend. He earned the trust of the older man, who delegated other tasks, like collecting rent payments.
It was a long list of stuff. It was very
lucrative for a pre-teen and teen.
“Whatever anybody needed, I did it,” Goff says. “I worked at a lumber yard, then [the same man] started building houses and I did that.
“Whenever my friends needed money, they would come to me,” he jokes.
Engineering seemed like a natural for a young man who grew up with a company, Dow, that desperately needed them. Goff certainly had an aptitude for it. He says building things and taking them apart, like a stereo or TV, was a favorite pastime.
“You name it, I built all kinds of stuff,” Goff says.
He had been accepted into a program at Dow in which the company would pay for an engineering degree, while the student would come back to work internships and, if everything went to plan, come to work full time at Dow.
All was going according to plan until that summer when he sat across from the
financiers.
And then the light switch went off.
Among his and wife Cami’s philanthropic pursuits, the Medal of Honor Museum, which has broken ground in Arlington, is a high priority.
The Goffs, Jerry Jones and his family are leading the fundraising movement to get it built, as well as a monument in Washington, D.C. So far, $185 million has been raised, including significant gifts from the Goffs and Joneses.
The Goffs have met with many of the 66 living Medal of Honor recipients.
“Incredible stories,” Goff says. “I find it unreal that nowhere in the U.S. is there a monument to honor them.”
It’s a passion project, he says. Cami Goff is executive vice president of the National Medal of Honor Museum board.
Texas A&M in Fort Worth is his passion, too.
“I may be a tea-sip,” Goff said in public remarks earlier this year of his education at the University of Texas, “but I can tell you that when it comes to Fort Worth and Tarrant County, I am totally agnostic. I am 100% on board.
“This was the No. 1 focus of mine personally, as well as Fort Worth Now, to get this deal done. It is a game changer. This will have so much impact. I can’t tell you how many companies have embraced this and are chomping at the bit to be a partner.”
The $350 million Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus will break ground soon. The money figure is a conservative estimate. The investment to be made, whether from the university or other sources, such as companies, will be “far greater than that,” Goff says.
“It’s going to be a big number.”
Fort Worth Now has been renamed the Fort Worth Tarrant County Innovation Partnership. Goff will be the chairman.
The high-rise complex will include classrooms, labs, and flexible research and maker spaces that can be used by the public and private sectors for academic programs, workforce training and collaborative research in the fields of engineering, emergency management communications, agriculture, health sciences and visualization, among others.
The Texas A&M System will construct the Law & Education Building. It will be financed with bonds backed by the Permanent University Fund and other sources.
The other two facilities, the Research and Innovation building and the Gateway Conference Center and offices, will be financed with city-issued bonds secured by leases to the A&M System and private sector development firms.
The Fort Worth City Council in January approved an interlocal agreement that spells out the general terms and conditions the city and Texas A&M will follow in developing the downtown campus.
The Research & Innovation Local Government Corp., also approved by City Council, will oversee a large portion of the campus, including construction of the Research and Innovation Building, Gateway Conference Center and a campus plaza.
A developer, who is yet to be chosen, will be responsible for developing and leasing the space for the private firms. Start dates for the two buildings have not been announced.
“Today, we are here to celebrate A&M’s continued nature of being both big and bold and their dreams of a Fort Worth campus,” said Councilwoman Elizabeth Beck, who represented the city in Mayor Mattie Parker’s stead. Parker was in Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
“A&M could have updated their law school and call it a day. Instead, they decided to dream big and invest physically with three buildings, culturally, educationally, and economically in our community.”
“There’s a real appetite here to be connected to this kind of university,” Goff said at the Greater Fort Worth Real Estate Council’s 2023 Forecast in January. “Alcon has been incredible at talking and being in those meetings with me and with A&M to get them to bring aspects of the university that can benefit Alcon here.”
Lockheed, Bell Helicopter, AT&T, Elbit
Systems, among others have joined in the meetings, too, he said.
Goff says he is personally working on one corporate relocation from the Northwest. The company employs software engineers that Texas A&M-Fort Worth will train and graduate.
“They want to move the entire company and locate right adjacent to the university,” he said.
Bobby Ahdieh, dean of the Texas A&M Law School, had been among those to first see the potential of a win-win with an expanded A&M presence in Fort Worth.
“There had been talk about building a new law school building for a while,” Ahdieh says. “Frankly, as I got to know Fort Worth and A&M [when he took the job 4 1/2 years ago], it was so clear to me that there was opportunity that was bigger than that.
“If there was an opportunity for A&M to use this location as a platform for a broader engagement with industry, with Fort Worth and all of North Texas that was a huge win for A&M. And on the Fort Worth side, there was this hole, this lack of strong Tier 1 research, academic programs, and workforce trends.”
Goff said he was bringing Price, then the mayor, with him.
“I didn’t tell him what it was about,” Goff says. “I had never met John. I sat right next to him. This was in the height of COVID. He had 20-30 people in the room. I go through this presentation. Afterward, he leans over and says, ‘I love this. I’m going to do it. We’re going to figure this out.’ We shook hands and away we went.”
As part of his end of the deal, Goff offered Texas A&M free rein and use of his offices downtown for any kind of meetings or business they needed.
Goff hasn’t made a dime for any of his work with Fort Worth Now or the new organization. Some have suggested that his company should develop the campus. It’s not as if they’re not capable. The company’s portfolio includes the new American Airlines state-of-the-art campus.
I may be a tea-sip, but I can tell you that when it comes to Fort Worth and Tarrant County, I am totally agnostic.
Ahdieh and Goff, who had put the dean on the board of Fort Worth Now, had spoken briefly about it.
Goff asked for another meeting at his office — in the same conference room we now sat — to talk further about it.
“We had lunch in this room,” Goff says. “He’s a fireball; lots of energy. He does wonderful things for that university.”
Goff put his developer’s hat on and asked to go to the site, to step out on the roof, and look over the property.
“We went onto the roof,” Adhieh recalls. “Here I am taking this billionaire crawling through this crawl space. But he was excited to get up there. He said, ‘This is a no-brainer. This is exactly what we need.’
“He brought vision to the table, and he’s ready to do the legwork.”
Goff set up a meeting with Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp in College Station.
“I don’t want the world to look back on this and say, ‘The only reason John did this was to make a nickel on the development,’” Goff says. “There are plenty of good developers. I’ll help select them. Let’s go pick the best one. It is said that history has a knack for putting the exact right people in place at the exact right time. As Fort Worth grapples to grow into its status as world-class city, a visionary has stepped forward with a prescription and know-how to get it done.
When all is said and done, Goff’s brief tenure as a public figure will be associated with a single achievement.
Remarkably, in a career full of capstone achievements, what will have been accomplished here will be as big as anything he has done before, because of its potential for revolutionary impact in Fort Worth and so many lives.
And the impact will be as great as any of those other visionary civic leaders who came before him.
“I really feel blessed to be part of Fort Worth,” Goff says. “I didn’t grow up here, but the city has been good to me. I’ve raised family here. This is a way I can give back, perhaps something meaningful.”
Biotech companies have found Fort Worth to be fertile ground for research and development.
As it concerns success stories in Fort Worth’s entrepreneurial sphere, Bill Burns’ Encore Vision stands out.
Working with consultants and scientists, Burns, a veteran of Fort Worth-based Alcon, developed a pharmaceutical composition that treats presbyopia, that condition that causes farsightedness in aging adults, leading to the use of what is commonly called “readers.” It has been estimated that 80% of adults will develop presbyopia.
It’s an eye-drop solution that can improve vision with applications over three months.
Novartis International, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, came in and swooped Burns off his feet with an offer he couldn’t refuse: upwards of $465 million for the company.
Encore Vision is but one of a number of startup success stories in the biotech space in Fort Worth, which is fertile ground for tech companies in general.
“You had some big pharma companies, like Alcon, Novartis, Galdemerra, and Smith and Nephew, headquartered here. Over time they spun off employees,” says Elyse Dickerson, CEO and co-founder of Eosera, manufacturer of earwax removal solution EarwaxMD. “Some of the the biggest success stories have come out of Alcon. As Alcon either changes their labor force or lays people off or employees decide to leave, that talent is being retained in Fort Worth and they are seeking or finding other opportunities and gaps in the market to fill.
“I think that’s one of the driving forces in biotech.”
were going to get it done, but we were going to get it done.”
They employee 40 today, Dickerson says. That’s up from 20 at the end of 2021.
TechFW is the common denominator of Fort Worth’s success stories in biotech and tech companies in general. The nonprofit is part of a flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem. TechFW is a business accelerator and incubator that helps emerging entrepreneurs launch and grow through mentoring and coaching. It helps innovators unlock the knowledge, resources, network and plans to actualize their ideas to improve lives. They build their high-growth companies; we help them level up.
It collaborates with The University of North Texas Science Center in Fort Worth on facilities and lab use for companies such as Eosera. Burns has called UNTHSC “instrumental” in his company’s research and development activities over the years.
TechFW works with founders who are working on proprietary technology or processes with a high barrier to entry.
“We prioritize those who own the rights to the technology or have licensed the technology,” says Hayden Blackburn, executive director of TechFW. “We then look at their vision, goals and needs to determine alignment between the company’s needs and TechFW's capabilities.”
Dickerson and co-founder Joe Griffin, a toxicologist with PhD credentials, were two of those former Alcon employees, both caught up in layoffs.
Dickerson and Griffin teamed up to deploy their base of knowledge and dig out their own path in biotechnology. They talked to every doctor who would sit down for dinner or lunch. What they found out was that earwax impaction was a problem for both older patients as well as the very youngest. And over-the-counter products on the market were not effective.
The two partnered with TechFW and began testing solutions in a University of North Texas Health Science Center lab for nine months. The end result was EarwaxMD, a product that uses a dual-action technology to dissolve earwax and clean the ear canal of any wax, oils, and debris in as little as 15 minutes.
In all, Eosera has 10 products in ear care now in 13,000 stores, including Kroger as well as online stores Rite Aid and Amazon. Of those early days, Dickerson said once: “We had no idea how we
Costs for companies is an initial $1,000 for the 12-weeek, pre-seed accelerator program, called ThinkLab. The incubation program, SmartStart, is $1,000 per quarter, and the scaling program, FastForward, is $1,500 per quarter. Once TechFW knows the details on the technology and business model, the companies’ founders are evaluated on coachability, business acumen, time, and resources dedicated to launching the startup, and other factors, including “drive, perseverance and grit,” three essential ingredients for startup leaders.
“It’s the best hidden secret in Fort Worth,” says Dickerson, today a member of the board of TechFW. “I didn’t even know about TechFW. When Joe and I went out on our own, someone said to us that you need to join TechFW. It will help get us off the ground.
“It gave us access to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, investors, mentors, advisers, as well as office space, conference rooms, copiers, a mailing address that wasn’t our home address. All these little things that people who don’t start a company don’t think about. All that stuff adds up and for someone who just has an idea for a company, you’re not going to go out and rent a conference room and huge office space.”
TechFW receives more than 50 applications annually, Blackburn
says. More than 150 startups apply annually for Cowtown Angels investing. Cowtown Angels is an investing group formed by TechFW in 2012.
Blackburn, founding director of IDEA Works FW, joined TechFW as an assistant director, and director of Cowtown Angels. “I continue to be a sponge for new insights and wisdom that will help founders benefit from our programs.”
Encore Vision, a TechFW client, also was one of the first companies to pitch to the Cowtown Angels. The Cowtown Angels invested $1.25 million in Burns’ company, according to reporting at the time.
The Encore Vision sales transaction was the first Cowtown Angels investment to be sold, and, said Mike Butts of the Cowtown Angels at the time in an understatement, “it was a home run.”
“My goal in joining the board is to make sure this is a sustainable institute, but also to build awareness,” Dickerson says. “It is driving economic development in the city of Fort Worth. If people are looking for philanthropic ways to give back to the city, but give back sort of tenfold … because if you give to TechFW, you are creating potentially hundreds of jobs. We’re an example. We employ 40 people, and we are just one company.
Dr. Suchismita Acharya is a co-founder and the current CEO and chief science officer for AyuVis Research, a pharmaceutical company and TechFW client, as well as partner with UNT Health Science Center.
Acharya received her doctorate in organic chemistry from the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology and trained as a medicinal/ pharmaceutical chemist during her post-doctoral research tenure at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
After completing post-doctorate research, she joined Alcon, where she stayed from 2002-11 conducting anti-glaucoma and anti-AMD drug research and development. From 2011-13 she worked with Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research conducting seminal discovery in new anti-AMD and anti-viral conjunctivitis drug.
In 2013, Acharya “packed up" her experience in drug discovery and development experience from Alcon and Novartis and began her search for the “right project to start her own venture.”
Around this same time, one of her colleague’s had published a paper on how a parasitic infection protected the host from bacterial infection and inflammation and uncovered a molecule produced by the parasite responsible for this protective effect.
The result was AyuVis and its series of novel compounds which produce anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activation of white blood cells to prevent and treat a broad spectrum of diseases.
It’s a huge unmet need with a huge $100 billion-plus of market potential, according to the company.
The company is focusing on a chronic lung disease, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, the second-leading cause of death in premature babies. To that end, the company last year, received a $1.8 million Small Business Innovation Research grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
In 2021, AyuVis’ AVR-48 was granted Orphan Drug Designation, a label given to drugs and biologies that have been defined for treatment, prevention, or diagnosis of a rare disease or condition.
Though VR-48 is the farthest along the regulatory pipeline, the company has other drug candidates it’s working on, with other can-
Other TechFW clients in the biotech space in Fort Worth:
Ampcare has developed ESP — Effective Swallowing Protocol — a non-invasive, FDA-cleared treatment for dysphagia — discomfort in swallowing as a symptom of disease — that combines the most effective electrical stimulation parameters with resistive exercises. The result is improved quality of muscle contraction and swallowing function, the company says.
Cx Precision Medicine is a life science company developing blood-based biomarker screening technology as well as companion diagnostics for therapeutic agents. Lead products are focused on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer´s disease, Parkinson´s disease, and other dementia-causing disorders.
Nanoscope is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing gene therapies to cure genetic diseases that cause vision impairment and blindness, including age-related macular degeneration and Startgardt Disease.
Founded in 2017, Neuro Rehab VR is hope for those suffering from neurological conditions. Neuro Rehab VR was founded with the goal of creating virtual reality rehabilitation for neuro, orthopedic, pediatric, geriatric, wellness, and more.
didates aimed at pneumonia, peritonitis, and fibrosis—all of which are in the pre-clinical stages.
“The recognition by the FDA is validation of our science and will facilitate our strategic partnership discussions,” Acharya said of FDA’s recognition of AVR-48. “The designation also can mark young companies as preferable to investors because it might be expected to have reduced competition. This is great motivation to our extraordinarily talented scientific, clinical and business team to march toward our goal to the clinic and beyond.”
Cowtown Angels is also a backer of AyuVis, which has said in the past that it’s eyeing a future $12 million Series A funding round to boost manufacturing and clinical trials.
It’s not a stretch to say Acharya could be the next Bill Burns and a big winner for the city of Fort Worth.
Here are our 2023 Top Commercial Brokers and Agents in the Fort Worth area. We arrive at this annual list by scraping CoStar data on sales volume and numbers of transactions and polling the largest brokerages for their top producers. We add heads of locally owned firms. To make the list, a producer must be licensed as a sales agent or broker by the Texas Real Estate Commission.
Bo Avery Owner TriMarsh Properties, LLC
Michael Berkowitz President & CEO Colonial Commercial Real Estate
Jerry Bolz Partner Worth Commercial Real Estate
LeAnn Brown Managing Partner Silver Oak Commercial Realty
Alex Bryant President Dodson Commercial Real Estate
Wayne Burgdorf CCIM Burgdorf Realty Group
Todd Burnette Managing Director JLL
Stephen Coslik Chairman The Woodmont Co.
Lane Cowden Owner Cowden Real Estate
George Curry Managing Director JLL
Will Dillard Principal Wells CRE
David Dunn Managing Director & Principal Broker SVN/Dunn Commercial
Eric English President English Realty Commercial Real Estate
Lisa Estrada Vice President Burk Collins Company
Jordan Foster Vice President Peyco Southwest Realty, Inc.
Dak Hatfield President Hatfield Advisors
Brandon Karr Senior Vice President Marcus & Millichap
Jim Kelley Principal Champions DFW Commercial Realty
Sarah LanCarte Founder LanCarte Commercial Real Estate
Tim Lancaster President TLC Realty, Inc.
Scott Lowe Associate Broker & Partner Vision Commercial Real Estate
Taylor Marks Director of Brokerage Woodcrest Capital
Matt Matthews Senior Advisor SVN/Trinity Advisors
Jonathan McDaniel Principal & President NAI Robert Lynn
Patrick (Pat) McDowell Managing Director JLL
Richard Minker Senior Director Worth Commercial Real Estate
Clint Montgomery Vice President SVN/Trinity Advisors
Will Northern Partner Northern Crain Realty
Don Phifer President Phifer & Associates
Trenton Price Principal Broker Vision Commercial Real Estate
Grant Pruitt President & Co-Founder Whitebox Real Estate
Beaux Riley Senior Vice President Advisors Commercial Real Estate
Donnie Rohde Principal Tarrant Commercial Real Estate Services
Joe Rudd Vice President Transwestern Real Estate Services
Robert Sawyer Principal Formation Real Estate
Gary Schragin Managing Broker Landhold Advisors
Randy Scott Owner Vision Commercial Real Estate
Bob Scully Senior Vice President CBRE
Roger Smeltzer, Jr. Founder Vision Commercial Real Estate
Gary Smith Broker Andews Dillingham Properties
Al Sorrels
Senior Vice President Majestic Realty Co.
Chris Stewart Vice President Vasseur Commercial Real Estate
Benjamin Sumner Managing Partner Centurion Real Estate Partners
Charles “C.B.” Team Vice President & Principal Ellis & Tinsley, Inc.
Gary Vasseur
Managing Director Vasseur Commercial Real Estate
Eric Vickers Vice President Hatfield Advisors
Russ Webb
Managing Partner Silver Oak Commercial Realty
Julieta Wilks Vice President LanCarte Commercial Real Estate
Ryan Wood Executive Vice President TCRG Properties, LLC
David Adams Vice President The Woodmont Co.
David Aldrich President William C. Jennings Co.
Steve Aldrich Senior Vice President Hillwood Development Corporation
Derek Anthony Senior Vice President The Woodmont Co.
David Barber Principal Formation Real Estate
Alan Baxter Agent Colonial Commercial Real Estate
Erik Blais First Vice President Bradford Commercial Real Estate Services
Jake Blankenship Market Director NAI Robert Lynn
Paul Blight Partner Glacier Commercial Realty
Zach Boatwright Director Vision Commercial Real Estate
Stephanie Bunn Agent
Century 21 Mike Bowman
Darren Cain Vice President LanCarte Commercial Real Estate
Cannon Camp Senior Vice President JLL
Brett Carlton Senior Associate Stream Realty Partners
Matt Carthey Managing Principal & Partner Holt Lunsford Commercial
J. David Cason Vice President Holt Lunsford Commercial
Reilly Clark Market Associate Holt Lunsford Commercial
Forrest Cook
Senior Vice President Stream Realty Partners
David Corley Associate LanCarte Commercial Real Estate
Ben Crancer Associate Vice President Whitebox Real Estate
Aaron Cullen Market Director Worth Commercial Real Estate
John Davidson Associate JLL
Chris Doggett Executive Vice President Stream Realty Partners
Cullen Donohue Senior Associate Stream Realty Partners
Robert Dorrough Agent Colonial Commercial Real Estate
Riley Dow Associate LanCarte Commercial Real Estate
Bryan Dyer Senior Vice President The Woodmont Co.
Clifton Ellis Associate Ellis & Tinsley, Inc.
Barrett England Vice President Vision Commercial Real Estate
Keith Fisher Principal Centurion Real Estate Partners
Brooke Ford Advisor SVN/Trinity Advisors
Jack Forney Director Centurion Real Estate Partners
Rachel Forslund Associate The Woodmont Co.
Jamie Galati Executive Vice President JLL
Benjamin Gehrke Agent LanCarte Commercial Real Estate
Jeff Givens Principal Transwestern Real Estate Services
Alex Gonzalez Associate Vision Commercial Real Estate
Kevin Goodman Director Vision Commercial Real Estate
Eric Goodwin Director of Office Champions DFW Commercial Realty
Blake Grable Associate Transwestern Real Estate Services
Thomas Grafton Market Director Holt Lunsford Commercial
Tracy Gray Managing Principal Holt Lunsford Commercial
Monika Guzman Vice President NAI Robert Lynn
Cameron Haddad Director Vision Commercial Real Estate
Hayden Harder Investment Advisor SVN/Trinity Advisors
Hogan Harrison Vice President Colliers
Todd Hawpe Principal Transwestern Real Estate Services
Hunter Hayes Market Director NAI Robert Lynn
Slater Howe Associate Worth Commercial Real Estate
Todd Hubbard Managing Principal & President NAI Robert Lynn
JP Humphrey, III Assistant Vice President Advisors Commercial Real Estate
Jeffery Jackson Executive Vice President NAI Robert Lynn
George Jennings Market Director Holt Lunsford Commercial
Jordan Johnson
Senior Vice President NAI Robert Lynn
John Jones Advisor SVN/Trinity Advisors
Kirk Kelly Principal Transwestern Real Estate Services
Karam Khalil
Associate Vision Commercial Real Estate
Seth Koschak
Executive Managing Director & Partner Stream Realty Partners
Garrison Lackey
Associate Transwestern Real Estate Services
Parker LanCarte
Associate LanCarte Commercial Real Estate
John Laudenslager Agent Northern Crain Realty
Lon Lloyd Director
Champions DFW Commercial Realty
Ryan Lunsford Associate Worth Commercial Real Estate
Molly MacEwan Director Vision Commercial Real Estate
Jeff Marek Vice President Vision Commercial Real Estate
Phillip Maxwell Director Engel & Volkers
Logan May Vice President NAI Robert Lynn
Jake McCoy Vice President The Woodmont Co.
Joe McLiney Transaction Manager NAI Robert Lynn
Vic Meyer Market Director Holt Lunsford Commercial
Matt Montague Executive Vice President JLL
Bobby Montgomery Market Director NAI Robert Lynn
Dan Morris Senior Vice President PMW Realty Partners
Jake Neal Vice President Holt Lunsford Commercial
Michael Newsome Principal & Executive Vice President NAI Robert Lynn
Jakob Nunez Director Vision Commercial Real Estate
Ian O’Connor Associate The Woodmont Co.
Cody Payne Senior Vice President Colliers
Debra Perryman Managing Partner Silver Oak Commercial Realty
Leland Prowse Principal Transwestern Real Estate Services
Jeff Rein Vice President Stream Realty Partners
Blake Rogers Vice President JLL
Grace Ruby Associate Formation Real Estate
David Schulenburg Regional Director Global Fund Investments
Daniel Shelley Associate LanCarte Commercial Real Estate
Geoff Shelton Senior Vice President JLL
Steve Shrum Co-Managing Partner Glacier Commercial Realty
Mimi Sisombath President KA Commercial Group
Courtney Stanford Advisor SVN/Dunn Commercial
Mark Sullivan Agent Ritter and Associates Real Estate
Bill Syblon Broker Vision Commercial Real Estate
Nick Talley Executive Vice President & Managing Partner Bradford Commercial Real Estate Services
Lyndon Todd Associate Transwestern Real Estate Services
Michael Tran Senior Associate Colliers
Sally Glen Turner Associate Worth Commercial Real Estate
William Underwood Principal Emersons Commercial Real Estate
Nathan Vasseur Principal Vasseur Commercial Real Estate
Brice Wells Vice President CBRE
Benson Williams Associate Lancarte Commercial Real Estate
In need of that perfect location for your office, manufacturing or warehousing space? Maybe you’re looking for commercial or residential investment property. The commercial Realtors, advisors and property managers on the following pages would like to tell you about themselves, their practices and why working with them will help facilitate your professional goals. The information in this section is provided by the advertisers and has not been independently verified by Fort Worth Inc.
SPECIALTY: Commercial Real Estate - Brokerage and Property Management. RECOGNITIONS/AWARDS: Best Companies to Work For 2021 and 2022. MEMBERSHIPS/AFFILIATIONS: Near Southside, Downtown Fort Worth, CCIM, SIOR, The Real Estate Council of Greater Fort Worth, Urban Land Institute. GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Helping our clients achieve their goals both strategically and financially — one project in particular where we negotiated a lease for a client with a purchase option that resulted in a 200% book gain for the client when the
purchase option was exercised. AREAS SERVED: Texas and National Tenant Representation. WHAT SETS THEM APART: We are a dynamic team of real estate professionals using entrepreneurial thinking to shift the paradigm of commercial real estate. Across all aspects of brokerage services, we invest in building meaningful client relationships. These partnerships allow us to relentlessly pursue each client’s specific goals. BEST MARKETING PLAN FOR CLIENTS BUYING OR SELLING: Our team has developed a proven process when it comes to our brokerage services
that generates superior results for our clients. Our in-house marketing team works closely with the agent to develop a custom marketing strategy that aligns with the client’s needs. The strategy is implemented to create maximum visibility and on-going lead generation through networking and our marketing platforms. Our team provides expert advice through the negotiation and closeout process. FREE ADVICE: Find a broker that takes the time to understand your objectives before making recommendations. We pride ourselves on our local expertise and knowledge
and being an advisor to our clients to create long-lasting relationships.
PICTURED: Sarah LanCarte, CCIM SIOR, President; Nick Talley, Partner; Julie Wilks, Vice President; Darren Cain; Daniel Shelley; Parker Lancarte; Riley Dow; Benson Williams.
LANCARTE COMMERCIAL
2627 Tillar St., Ste. 121 | Fort Worth, Texas 76107
817.409.4040 | lancartecre.com | info@lancartecre.com
SPECIALTY: Multi-Tenant Retail Development, Investments Sales, and Project Leasing. RECOGNITIONS/ AWARDS: National Sales Award (2017), “Top 30 MultiTenant Retail Agents” two-time designee while with Marcus & Millichap. AREAS SERVED: North Texas. WHAT SETS HER APART: Lisa Estrada-Perdue believes in working fairly and honestly, putting her clients’ and company’s interests first. She’s committed to achieving her clients’ goals by paying attention to the details, respecting the relationship first, and going beyond to deliver excellence. Furthermore, she strives to be a reliable source for current and accurate market information. This combination helps clients make informed decisions to meet their goals. Developing lasting relationships with and understanding her clients’ investment strategies is of the greatest importance.
FREE ADVICE: Surround yourself with professional industry veterans to share, inspire, and motivate as well as to navigate rocky times and commemorate accomplishments. It will have a positive impact on your career.
PICTURED: Lisa Estrada-Perdue.
BURK COLLINS & CO., LTD.
500 Grapevine Highway, Ste. 224 Hurst, Texas 76054
940.577.5499
Fax 817.268.2240
burkcollinscompany.com
lisa@burkcollinscompany.com
SPECIALTY: Since 1983, Ellis & Tinsley, Inc. has specialized in the Brokerage and Management of Office, Medical, Retail, and Light Industrial properties. EDUCATION/CERTIFICATIONS: Over 170 years of brokerage experience across six brokers makes Ellis & Tinsley one of the most experienced teams in Fort Worth. RECOGNITIONS: Numerous awards received such as the Charles D. Tandy Commercial REALTOR Award, Certificate of Recognition from the City of Fort Worth, the REALTOR Spirit Award, and Fort Worth Business Press 40 Under 40. AFFILIATIONS: Office affiliations include CCIM (Certified Commercial Investment Member), The Society of Commercial REALTORS, The Institute for Professionals in Property Taxation, The Juneteenth Celebration Committee, Fort Worth Stock Show and
Rodeo, Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, Love4Locals, Camp Bowie District, and The Boy Scouts’ Longhorn Council. AREAS SERVED: We serve the Greater North Texas area with an emphasis on Tarrant County. WHY CHOOSE THEM: Locally owned commercial firm with unrivaled market knowledge combined with industry leading platforms that meet the needs of clients today and tomorrow. PICTURED: Bill Ellis, Charles “C.B.” Team, Kevin Cavasos, Kent McKeever, Clifton Ellis, Bill Tinsley.
ELLIS & TINSLEY, INC.
6421 Camp Bowie Blvd., Ste. 302 | Fort Worth, Texas 76116 817.737.5000 | ellis-tinsley.com
SPECIALTY: Oilfield Service Facilities, Industrial and Land Brokerage, Asset Management. RECOGNITIONS/AWARDS: Costar Power Broker awards in DFW and Austin, Blacks Guide Top 35 under 35, NAI Global Elite, CCIM Biggest Deals Award, SIOR North Texas Largest Industrial Transaction. MEMBERSHIPS/AFFILIATIONS: CCIM, SIOR, GFWAR, BOMA. GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Our firm has completed over 1,250 transactions since its inception in 2015. AREAS SERVED: DFW, Permian Region, South Texas, all other oil and gas regions. WHAT SETS THEM APART: We are physically present at all stages of transaction. Formation provides the highest level of real estate services to our clients without being restricted to a geographic area. BEST MARKETING
STRATEGY OFFERED TO CLIENTS: We are a highly skilled team of specialists with a deep network and all the latest technology. We utilize all our relationships and resources to directly reach the prospects who need to see it first. FREE ADVICE: Always be willing to make introductions and reciprocate when someone does something to help you. PICTURED: David Barber, Robert Sawyer, John Jinks, Eric Diment, and Grace Ruby.
FORMATION REAL ESTATE, LLC
2906 SE Loop 820, Ste. G • Fort Worth, Texas 76140
817.368.6050 • formationtx.com rsawyer@formationtx.com
SPECIALTY: John A. Laudenslager specializes in commercial investment property and has experience running the gamut from land sales to landlord/tenant representation. The CCIM credential is probably the most respected credential in real estate. It’s essentially a master’s degree in real estate investment, marketing, and lease analysis. RECOGNITIONS/ AWARDS: Fort Worth Magazine’s Top Realtor, 2022; Leadership Class, 2021. MEMBERSHIPS/AFFILIATIONS: Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM); Society of Commercial Realtors (SCR) Board of Governors, Vice Chair, 2023; Downtown Fort Worth Rotary; Foodie Philanthropy Board; Fort Worth Real Estate Council. GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Closing over $21,000,000 in sales over the past two years; earning the CCIM designation; an MBA from UTA; founding of BrothersKeepers, a Fort Worth nonprofit dedicated to veterans and first responders. AREAS SERVED: DFW and licensed to practice anywhere in Texas. WHAT SETS HIM APART: Customer service, professionalism, and integrity separate Laudenslager from the competition.
“I’m a straight shooter. I take my role as fiduciary to my clients and the REALTOR and CCIM Codes of Ethics seriously. Integrity matters; as Omar said in ‘The Wire,’ ‘You gotta have a code.’” MARKETING STRATEGY FOR CLIENTS: After determining the client’s objectives, he says it’s all about the data, market positioning, and specific marketing elements that maximize value potential. PICTURED: John A. Laudenslager, CCIM.
NORTHERN CRAIN REALTY
813 Hemphill Fort Worth, Texas 76104
682.553.7432
northerncrain.com
john.l@northerncrain.com
SPECIALTY: Investment Sales, Medical/Professional Owner-Occupant Buildings, Leasing, Land/ Farm & Ranch Sales. RECOGNITIONS/AWARDS: D Magazine CEO Power Broker, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022; Grapevine Chamber of Commerce Chairman’s Award, 2021; Grapevine Rotary Club Rotarian of the Year, 2022; People of Action Award Cross Timbers Rotary Club, 2018; Best of Denton County Commercial Broker, 2018, 2022; Fort Worth Business Press Largest Commercial Real Estate Brokers and Developers, 2017, 2021 and 2022. PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Webb was broker of record for the sale of the Lockheed building in Abilene, Texas, a 300,000-square-foot industrial complex; Brown was broker responsible for locating space for Glenn Beck’s Mercury Studios for lease and eventual purchase at the Studios at Las Colinas. AREAS SERVED: Tarrant, Dallas, Denton, Taylor, Throckmorton, and Shackleford counties. WHAT SETS THEM APART: Seventy years of combined commercial real estate experience. With extensive local and regional market knowledge and personal relationships, they look at every purchase and lease as if it were their own and advise clients accordingly, helping clients on each transaction phase. MARKETING STRATEGY FOR CLIENTS: Brown and Webb take advantage of multiple marketing websites and social media to ensure the best exposure for their clients. ADVICE: Show up early and stay late until the job is completed. PICTURED: LeAnn Brown and Russ Webb, CCIM.
2805 Market Loop, Ste. 100 Southlake, Texas 76051
817.313.3107
817.233.7100
silveroakcre.com labrown@silveroakcre.com rwebb@silveroakcre.com
SPECIALTY: Specializing in the acquisition, entitlement, development, and management of high-quality commercial real estate projects throughout North Texas. GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Successfully launching a third-party brokerage services team and the rebranding of Dodson Commercial to Street Realty. AREAS SERVED: The Greater Fort Worth area. WHAT SETS THEM APART: World-class expertise focused on the local community and experience for all investors, customers, and team members. BEST MARKETING PLAN FOR CLIENTS: Focusing on forward-thinking real estate in the local community, maximizing the use of
technology and social media, and an exceptional experience for all parties involved. FREE ADVICE: If it is worth doing, it is worth doing right.
PICTURED: Alex Bryant, Ryan Dodson, Colton Wallis, Wes Mugarian, Jackson Berling, Billy Newby III, and Suzannah Fritchman.
STREET REALTY, LLC
817.469.4868
streetrealty.com
alex@streetrealty.com
SPECIALTY: Tarrant Commercial Real Estate Services concentrates its efforts on industrial and office properties in the Tarrant County area, working with both owners and users on leasing, purchasing, and property management. RECOGNITIONS/AWARDS: CoStar Power Broker - DFW Industrial, 2011, 20132017; D CEO Magazine Power Broker Award 2014.
Donnie considers his most notable achievement the friendships built with clients and the opportunities that has created for him over his career. Also noteworthy is his experience in renovating and leasing industrial buildings. He has been involved with numerous properties over the last 15 years requiring a plan for resolving difficult maintenance and repair issues, overdue collections, and other occupancy issues. In all cases stabilizing occupancy and increasing lease rates. WHAT SETS THEM APART: The TCRES team is focused on long-term relationships with clients. They take their role as a fiduciary seriously and guide clients as if they were spending their own money.
BEST MARKETING PLAN FOR CLIENTS: If selling a single-user office or industrial property, it’s beneficial to have an updated survey, environmental report, and, ideally, a floor plan for the building. When a buyer is armed with drawings and detail on the property they are looking to purchase, they can move through the due diligence process quickly and hopefully close before the next rate hike by the Fed.
REAL ESTATE SERVICES
1349 W. Hurst Blvd. Hurst, Texas 76053
817.521.5989
tarrantproperties.com donnie@tarrantproperties.com
SPECIALTY: Brokerage, Investments, and Property Management. RECOGNITIONS/AWARDS: CoStar Power Broker. MEMBERSHIPS/ AFFILIATIONS: APN (Aviation Property Network), CCIM, NTCAR, ICSC. GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS: We are proud of our growth. From one agent in 2011 to over 30 today, more than 300 listings, and over 100 T-Rep clients — it’s something to be proud of. But our greatest achievement is in the number of people we’ve helped and communities we’ve impacted by closing over 2,500 deals. AREAS SERVED: Our core market is the Greater North Texas market while serving our clients throughout the Lone Star State. WHAT SETS THEM APART: Our brokers/agents are advisors with a depth of expertise in their respective specialties. MARKETING STRATEGY FOR CLIENTS: Each asset is different. We advise our clients of ways to enhance their properties to secure top dollar in
the market. When the property is ready to present to the market, we leverage our internal database of prospects in addition to aggressively presenting the property to the marketplace. FREE ADVICE: Always call someone back quickly. Being responsive has been one of the biggest factors in our growth, and we respond immediately to a lead whether it’s an 800-square-foot salon or multibillion-dollar REIT. PICTURED: Scott Lowe, Zach Boatwright, Barrett England, Kevin Goodman, Jeff Marek, Bill Syblon, and Randy Scott.
VISION COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
1340 S. Main St., Ste. 305 | Grapevine, Texas 76051
817.803.3287
visioncommercial.com
info@visioncommercial.com
SPECIALTY: Tenant Representation. AREAS
SERVED: We have offices in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin and help our clients with their real estate across the U.S. and internationally. WHAT SETS THEM APART: As a tenant representation firm, we only have one goal, and that’s to find solutions that maximize our clients’ real estate strategies. As a boutique firm, we are able to skip the red tape and really customize our service for each individual client by understanding their business and culture goals. BEST MARKETING PLAN FOR CLIENTS: At Whitebox we know that each company has unique challenges that require unique solutions, so no two strategies are going to be the same. We know we have to understand the market and its players better than anyone else and be able to leverage that information to get the optimal outcome for our clients. FREE ADVICE: We say it over and over again: Engage with a Tenant Advisor. Let a team like Whitebox, whose fiduciary is solely to you, do the legwork for you so you can focus on your company’s goals and objectives. PICTURED: Grant Pruitt, SIOR, and Ben Crancer.
WHITEBOX REAL ESTATE
Multiple locations
whiteboxrealestate.com
SPECIALTY: Tenant representation and project leasing are favorite focuses of our team. Asset management and investment are also key efforts. A new undertaking for Worth Commercial is our Self-Storage Advisory Services team, which is led by industry legend, Richard Minker. MEMBERSHIPS/ AFFILIATIONS: Many on our team are involved in the Real Estate Council, CREW, along with some local chambers of commerce. AREAS SERVED: Our brokerage efforts are mainly in Fort Worth/Tarrant County, but we spend some time in Dallas as well. Our investments are statewide. WHAT SETS THEM APART: Our people. We genuinely enjoy working together to meet the needs of our clients by using the creativity and resources of the team to achieve the best results. BEST MARKETING STRATEGY: Each commercial property or leasing need is different. Worth tailors marketing efforts
based on the needs of the client and the unique features of the property. We strive to play offense — thinking creatively and working as a team to create the best results for each property. FREE ADVICE: Invest in Fort Worth, even if you have to start small. We live in an incredible city with a great future.
PICTURED: (back, left to right) Ryan Lunsford, Jerry Bolz, Aaron Cullen, Slater Howe; (front, left to right) Richard Minker and Sally Glen Turner.
WORTH COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
3750 S. University Drive, Ste. 200 | Fort Worth, Texas 76109
817.420.9555
worthcre.net
jerry.bolz@worthcre.net
MULTIFAMILY INVESTMENTS | PARTNERSHIPS BUILT TO LAST
We offer investment partnerships that reveal solid returns while providing residents a great living experience, and we never compromise on that promise.
To partner with us, contact Anthony Wonderly at AWonderly@livebellrock.com & Jarrad Principle at JPrinciple@livebellrock com
Learn more at LiveBellrock.com
Save the date! Join us for a special cocktail reception on Thursday, May 18 for a celebration of Fort Worth Inc.’s 400 Most Influential People in Fort Worth. Each year, Fort Worth Inc. provides this comprehensive list of individuals who have shown significant influence within their careers and lives to make Fort Worth better.
Purchase tickets to the event by scanning the QR code below or by entering this URL in your browser
Selected from The 400 list, the Person of the Year award goes to someone who has made significant contributions toward making Fort Worth a better place to live and work throughout their life. This year, Fort Worth Inc. has chosen Sonny Dykes as the recipient of this honor. bit.ly/400reception
Efficiency – it’s the key to getting ahead. Technology exists to add time and energy back to your life and business so you can move faster. The tech companies represented on the following pages invite you to a world of cutting-edge technology that propel businesses forward. The information in this section is provided by the advertisers and has not been independently verified by Fort Worth Inc.
SPECIALTY: Managed service provider. INNOVATIVE SERVICES: Along with providing a full range of IT and cybersecurity services, Aeko also helps companies seamlessly integrate IT functions throughout mergers and acquisitions. As an IT support partner, we navigate mergers, acquisitions, or dissolutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Before starting Aeko in 2016, Brian spent 20 years overseeing large teams, including as an IT executive for an oil and gas company. His business-first approach to technology contributed to that company’s growth into a $12 billion, S&P 500 company. He also led organizations through complex changes during large-scale mergers and acquisitions. Brian’s enthusiasm for helping people fix their IT problems, with a focus on providing a trouble-free environment, has been a key
factor in Aeko’s increased portfolio of more than 50 clients to date. WHAT SETS THEM APART: Aeko Technologies takes a business-first approach to technology. We are the region’s only business-first IT services company led by a former IT director for a publicly traded company. MISSION: Aeko is the Hawaiian word for eagle, a bird with strength and exceptional vision. When businesses choose Aeko Technologies, they tap into the strength of our team’s experience and our ability to see what’s ahead. Our mission is to help clients use the power of IT to realize their vision.
Aeko Technologies 1012 Winscott Road, Ste. 102 | Fort Worth, Texas 76126
817.923.2419 | aekotech.com | info@aekotech.com
SPECIALTY: Affordable cybersecurity protection for all businesses and organizations using advanced technologies developed by former federal defense experts. RECOGNITIONS/ AWARDS: Ironwood Cyber has been awarded three patents for innovative and evolutionary technology in cybersecurity threat detection and machine learning. INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS/ SERVICES: Ironwood Cyber Rx™ is our automated cybersecurity service that provides complete protection from cybersecurity threats at an affordable cost. It gives access to proven cybersecurity experts without having to hire. Firethorn™ is our sophisticated ransomware threat protection that’s based on patented artificial intelligence that can stop even the most evasive attacks. ADDITIONAL PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Dr. Estes and Ironwood Cyber co-founder Ethan Puchaty are both former Lockheed Martin Fellows, a highly distinguished title which they earned for their groundbreaking and industry-changing contributions to cybersecurity in the federal and commercial space. MISSION: Our mission is to care for the cyber health of our customers through the deployment of least-friction, bestof-breed, and cost-effective security solutions to clients of all sizes. We work to minimize cyber risk while enabling our customers to focus on what they do best. FREE ADVICE TO TECH STARTUPS: Focus on hiring a team of the most innovative and passionate people you know. This means spending time building meaningful relationships. It is your team that will drive success over products and strategy. PICTURED: Dr. Aaron Estes.
Ironwood Cyber
6000 Western Place, Ste. 501 Fort Worth, Texas 76107 support@ironwoodcyber.com ironwoodcyber.com
FOCUS: Slalom is a purpose-led, global business and technology consulting company. In six countries and 43 markets, we deliver practical, end-to-end solutions that drive meaningful impact. Slalom partners with over 400 of the world’s leading technology solution partners. We know their technologies inside and out, and they love us for our flexibility, tireless innovation, and focus on outcomes. GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Consistently, Slalom wins Partner of the Year awards with our top partners such as Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Salesforce, Google Cloud, and more. We’re consistently recognized as a great place to work, including being one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For seven years running. WHAT SETS THEM APART: Slalom puts people first. We are focused on fostering a culture where each team member — both Slalom employees and our clients — feels valued, understood, included, and connected. MOTTO:
We help people and organizations dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows for all. ADVICE TO TECH STARTUPS: Stay true to your passion, be okay with asking for help, lean on your network, and be aggressive. PICTURED: (sitting) Amey Kulkarni, Salesforce, Senior Consultant; Meghna Chandrashekhara, Business Advisory Services, Senior Consultant; Lesley Johnmeyer, Organizational Effectiveness, Director; Cindy Clingenpeel, Business Advisory Services, Senior Delivery Director; (standing) Jeff Spradlin, Technology Enablement Principal; Raju Balan, Data & Analytics, Director; Todd Hawkins, Technology Enablement, Director.
SLALOM
2102 E. State Highway 114, Ste. 215 | Southlake, Texas 76092
817.345.6207 | Fort Worth | Slalom | hellofortworth@slalom.com
SPECIALTY: Cyber security, full-managed services, and complete onboarding. INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS: Azure. Plus, you get a whole team for the price of one tech. PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Mike Campbell, VP of Sales, has a history of taking MSPs to the next level. He brought $4 million in growth in four years at his last company. Mike is an impressive mentor to the next generation of sales gurus. Tony Estrada, CEO, principal and veteran, began his adventures in IT before you could buy a computer off the shelf. At first, it was just a hobby. Soon, a friend pointed out his knack for the field, and he blasted off. He is undaunted by challenges. With Tony, problems are solved. Shana Russell, retired U.S. Navy IT chief, is continuing her civilian life in IT.
She is detail-oriented, a problem-solver, and a people person. Shana is leading our tech team pros like a chief. COMPANY’S FUTURE: Continued growth in partnership with Microsoft. WHAT SETS THEM APART: A service level governed by John 16:33. FIRM’S MOTTO: “Right beside you and one gigabyte ahead.” FREE ADVICE FOR TECH STARTUPS: Shower! PICTURED: Mike, Tony, and Shana.
Spryder Technologies
6387 Camp Bowie Blvd., Ste B - 415 | Fort Worth, Texas 76116
844.777.7337
SpryderTech.com | sales@SpryderTech.com
SPECIALTY: We specialize in supporting CFOs and Controllers responsible for directing and managing the IT infrastructure within their organization. RECOGNITIONS/AWARDS: Entrepreneur of Excellence - Tech & E-Commerce, 2022; Inc. 5000 Award, 2020; Aggie 100, 2019; Greater Tarrant Business Ethics Award, 2013. INNOVATIVE SERVICES: Technology is everywhere, but every business is unique. A customized solution to each company’s technical integration is innovative in today’s world of cookie-cutter IT. IT strategy is understanding the technology systems, not only that everything works, but ensuring the technology integrates smoothly. We help customers utilize technology — while keeping their critical systems and data safe and secure — by consistently delivering reliable IT solutions. The result is IT that just works — when, where, and how you want it. PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
BBA Accounting degree, Texas A&M University; MBA, TCU; TXCPA - Fort Worth Chapter, CPA of the Year, 2020; TXCPA - Outstanding Committee Chairman - Business & Industry Issues, 2020. WHAT SETS THEM APART: When you combine these three things together — teamwork, learning, planning — you’re able to deliver service that’s greater than the sum of its parts. We call this “The TriQuest Way,” and this focus provides every customer with the competitive advantage of having reliable, responsible, right-sized IT that can grow, change, and adapt as their business evolves.
TriQuest Technologies, Inc. 2109 W. Broadway Ave. | Fort Worth, Texas 76102
817.882.8500 triquesttech.com | info@triquesttech.com
the 68 th
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Expect an evening of elegance and celebration with surprising details around every corner. Since 1954, the Jewel Charity Ball has honored the hearts of Angel donors. Their generosity helps us provide for the patients at Cook Children’s. Please visit our website to learn more.
WORDS BY MICHAEL GOODRICH
Imagine you get a call, and somebody has been assaulted or robbed on property you own, and you don’t even engage in activity at the property. Can you be held liable for damages to the victim? Maybe.
Ordinarily, the criminal act of a third party is an intervening event that relieves a landowner of liability for the consequences of the criminal act. While you won’t have criminal liability, assuming you didn’t commit the crime, you may have civil liability.
Determining factors include the nature of the relationship with the victim (i.e., if the victim is a trespasser, the duty is less than if the victim is an invitee); whether you control or can control the premises; and, most importantly, whether the crime is foreseeable.
Foreseeability is determined based on the nature and location of the property, history of activity there, and reasonable standards associated with ownership of property subject to certain known risks.
The first test to determine if one has liability is whether the landowner had a duty to the victim. A duty will only exist if the risk of criminal conduct on the property is so great as to be unreasonable and foreseeable.
Determining foreseeability turns on what the owner knows or should have known, including factors such as previous criminal activity and its frequency, use of the property, neighborhood conditions, and general safety features of your property such as lighting, fencing, or security.
If the owner has leased the property to a third party or the property is otherwise under the control of another party and the owner has little to zero control, then the owner likely would not have liability unless unusual circumstances exist.
Unoccupied or abandoned property may increase the landowner’s risk. In some cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that for a landowner to have liability for a crime, the crime must be sufficiently similar to previous ones in the area, reasonably putting the landowner on notice of the danger.
If ordinances are in place that affect premise safety, a landowner’s failure to comply may result in a finding of negligence and liability.
How do you protect yourself? Prudent landowners will:
Ensure they have adequate commercial liability insurance coverage (be specific with your insurance broker about potential liability for third parties’ criminal acts).
Assess physical condition of their property, general factors such as use of the property and conditions present in the neighborhood, and consider improving lighting, alarm systems, fencing, and other measures if you believe they’re beneficial and cost-efficient.
Discuss these and additional concerns with your attorney.
You do not have an obligation to ensure your property is 100% safe against all risks. Absent foreseeability and other surrounding circumstances, prudent
landowners should be able to adequately protect themselves from such claims.
WORDS BY MIKE BRENNAN
With 2023 in motion, our Near Southside, Inc. team’s top priorities include focus on creating new destinations adjacent to Trinity Metro’s current and future rail stations.
For maximum success, plans should incorporate certain ingredients responsible for much of the Near Southside’s revitalization: highly active and engaging streetscapes and public spaces designed with residents, workers, and visitors in mind; innovative business investments that strengthen the regional economy; and new housing options to meet the diverse demand for urban living.
As is the case with all Near Southside projects, these transit-oriented developments will be collaborative efforts among a remarkable group of partners, all committed to a shared vision of opportunity, innovation, and vibrant places throughout the Near Southside.
Two opportunities have been the focus of recent City Council and Tax Increment Financing Board presentations, and we are pleased to share updates. Both proposals are still at an early stage.
For the property at 200 W. Vickery Blvd., immediately south of T&P Sta-
tion, we are encouraged by discussions between Trinity Metro and a development group working on a project incorporating roughly 320 residential units and over 100,000 square feet of Class A office space in two 10-story towers.
The two buildings frame an outdoor public plaza activated by adjacent ground floor retail, providing a direct connection to the station’s south entrance. Additional features include a pocket park along South Main and enhanced multifunctional Vickery streetscape for bus transfers and bike-share riders. Big steps still lie ahead, the most significant being final terms with Trinity Metro, but the project enjoys widespread support, and we are hopeful progress continues.
For the second location, perhaps the most exciting news from 2022 was confirmation of funding for TEXRail’s extension to a new station serving our western Medical District. The platform location is a few hundred feet south of Mistletoe Boulevard, immediately west of Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center.
This TOD site has tremendous potential to establish a new Near Southside destination with many of the ingredients of our most successful urban villages. Over 10 acres of vacant, developable property should evolve as a complement to the Magnolia and South Main villages, similarly serving as an activity hub with strong connections to surrounding businesses, institutions, and neighborhoods.
While still preliminary, a concept plan vision is emerging for the site, with our Near Southside team working closely with Baylor Scott & White All Saints, Trinity Metro’s TEXRail team, surrounding neighborhood and city leaders, and an experienced transit-oriented development consultant team.
Creating a circulation network to serve the station well and set the stage for desirable development has been a primary focus of initial planning. New connections to Rosedale Street, Eighth Avenue, and Park Place, in addition to Mistletoe Boulevard, will be essential in maximizing accessibility. In addition, Leslie Creek’s meander into the site could allow a large, attractive, and multifunctional public space serving as a community asset and critical drainage infrastructure.
Many steps lie ahead, and final plans will certainly change from details of the preliminary concept. That said, we are inspired by the vision and collaboration among partners. With that strong foundation, we’ll continue working to create a mixed-use innovation hub that takes the Near Southside and Trinity Metro’s rail transit system to new heights.
Mike Brennan is president of Near Southside, Inc., the nonprofit economic and community development organization leading the revitalization of Fort Worth’s historic Near Southside.
Elizabeth Beck didn’t think she was suited for elective politics. Now, she’s seeking a second term on the Fort Worth City Council.
WORDS BY JOHN HENRY IMAGE BY CRYSTAL WISE
For the more than a year that Elizabeth Beck ran unsuccessfully for the Texas state House in 2020, a trend emerged.
More often than not, the concerns she heard from would-be constituents of District 97 weren’t state matters but those of the city. She was as educated by voters as they were by her.
When the District 9 seat on the Fort Worth City Council opened up, she threw her hat in the ring. This spring she is running for a second term on the Council. As of this writing in late January, only one other candidate has filed, Jason Pena. Taylor Mondick has shown interest.
“I often say it’s the hardest job I’ve ever had, and I’ve been to war and I’m a single mom,” she kids. “But it’s also the most rewarding job I’ve ever had. I ran because I truly love the city of Fort Worth, and I think I have a little more to offer. So, I’d like the opportunity to do that for two more years.”
Beck, a member of Fort Worth Inc.’s The 400: The Most Influential People in Fort Worth, recently turned the clock on her 40th birthday.
The landmark event gave her the opportunity to reflect on where she has been and where she is going. Beck is an Army veteran who served in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and master’s
degree in city and regional planning from UT-Arlington. She also has a law degree from Texas A&M in Fort Worth. She does employment and labor law.
Oddly, only 10 years prior, she had no interest in elective politics.
“Absolutely not. I just didn’t think it would be for me. It’s scary to think about
running for office; to put your name on the ballot. It’s tough. I would have said I wasn’t suited for that. A lot of self-doubt there. In large part I have had to self-parent myself.”
However, after a first term, she knows what she wants to be doing for the next two years: “I want to do what I’m doing now.”
