Fort Worth Inc. - Spring 2024

SPILLING THE TEA

How Justin Howe Made HTeaO the Starbucks of Iced Tea.

OUR 12TH MAN Aggie

Contents/Justin Howe

Features

40 Texas Tea: Justin Howe may not know how he was the first to come up with the concept — making a Starbuckslike franchiser for tea only — but he’s reaping the rewards of his idea, with HTeaO becoming one of the fastestgrowing companies in the Southwest.

33 The Holy Grail on the Trinity: The longdebated, long-gestated, and long-awaited Trinity River Vision, a multimillion-dollar plan to open up 200 acres of development along the Trinity River just north of the courthouse, is finally taking shape.

49 Top Commercial Brokers and Agents: A listing of 147 of the city’s top-performing commercial brokers and agents

4 Publisher’s Note

Bizz Buzz

8 Silver Bells: After starting phoneless, computerless, and nameless, one can say accounting firm JTaylor has come a long way in 25 years.

10 Clothes Call: Twentysix-year-old entrepreneur

Ayo Aigbe’s ingenuous clothes hangers are exactly what the tailor ordered.

12 Building a Hydrogen Future: A who’s who of local officials welcomes alternative energy company Harnyss to its new headquarters in far west Fort Worth.

16 Around Cowtown: LG Electronics cuts the ribbon on a new Fort Worth factory, where the South Korean company will manufacture electric vehicle charging stations.

18 EO Spotlight: What’s Jesse Smith’s secret to Wyred AV’s high retention rate? Well, remembering his customers’ pets’ names doesn’t hurt.

Inside the C-Suite

22 Tech: A Fort Worth company says it has a bipartisan remedy for one of society’s most harmful ills: gun violence.

24 Commercial Real Estate: The once popularly named, upcoming mixed-use development, “The Mullet,” has a new moniker and a goal of ushering in a Cultural District transformation.

28 Health & Fitness: Healthy and happy employees are at the heart of successful businesses, which is where Higginbotham’s Jennifer Speer comes in.

Bizz Wrap-Up

60 Analyze This: How long should you expect to live? If remaining active, longer than you may think, which means saving more money for your retirement, John Loyd writes.

64 1 in 400: After going from Princeton undergrad to Yale law — and hopping around, teaching at other Ivies — Bobby Ahdieh is earning his Texas stripes as the dean of the Texas A&M Law School. 40 16 18

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Brewing Success — Making Lemonade From Life's Lemons

OWNER/PUBLISHER HAL A. BROWN

Have you noticed that entrepreneurship tends to run in the family? Perhaps it’s genetics, or maybe it’s upbringing and exposure to traits like risk-taking, resilience, and creativity.

Whatever it is, Justin Howe's family has it. Howe and his HTeaO are this issue’s cover story. In an interview about his beverage retail tea company HTeaO, he was asked if anyone in his immediate family has ever worked for someone else. His answer: “Not that I recall.”

HTeaO isn't just another tea shop. It’s a concept born out of necessity.

The original tea idea was not Howe’s, but that of Gary Hutchens, his stepfather, who with Howe’s mother, Kim, was running their family restaurant during the recession of 2008-09, the worst economic downturn in the U.S. since the Great Depression.

In 2008 alone, more than 7,000 restaurants were forced to close. When faced with challenges, entrepreneurs exemplify resilience by turning adversity into opportunity. With the ethos of making lemonade from life's lemons that is engrained in the minds of entrepreneurs, Howe’s stepfather came up with the idea of setting up six flavors of tea in the restaurant to lure in the thirsty and increase traffic. The tea tactic worked, with sales increasing 15% coming out of the 2008 turmoil.

Over the course of three years, with the “Texas Tea” concept catching on, Howe and Hutchens decided to partner up and do something bigger and launch a tea-only beverage retail location. The process to launch HTeaO took six years, starting with building a prototype store in Amarillo, which was a testing ground for going all tea, all the time. The prototype store was successful. With a focus solely on tea, the now-named HTeaO set itself apart from the crowded market of coffee chains and generic cafes.

In January, the 100th HTeaO franchise was opened in College Station. Scaling up from a single store to 100 is no small feat, but Howe’s strategic approach and entrepreneurial acumen have paved the way for even more expansion. To date, 400 other franchises are at some level of the pipeline leading to development. In total, they’re spread around 14 states, from Arizona to the Carolinas and Florida as bookends.

In the world of entrepreneurship, there are visionaries, and then there are trailblazers like Justin Howe. His entrepreneurial story is not just about building a business, it's about redefining an entire industry.

VOLUME 10, NUMBER 1, SPRING 2024

owner/publisher hal a. brown chief operating officer mike waldum

editorial executive editor john henry creative director craig sylva senior art director spray gleaves advertising art director jonathon won director of photography crystal wise contributing editor brian kendall fwtx.com digital editor stephen montoya copy editor sharon casseday

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Bizz Buzz

Someone is telling jokes. Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker appears to be enjoying a moment with Alec Jang during the ceremonial grand opening of LG's first U.S. electric vehicle charging plant in January. Page 16.

Silver Bells

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY

JTaylor’s New Year’s celebration stretched far into January as the accounting firm celebrated its landmark 25th anniversary with a soiree in the middle of the month at The Ostreum on the South Freeway.

A reel-to-reel would tell quite a story of progress.

“Starting on Jan. 4 of 1999,” Joe Taylor says, “we didn't have an office, we didn't have a file, we didn't necessarily have a client, we had no supplies, we had no computer, we had no phone, we had no phone number, we had no name. So, we were kind of out there.”

In the very beginning three founding partners — Taylor, Courtney McKay, and Shannon Schumacher — patched together a firm. It was spartan-type stuff — a folding table from Sam’s Club and card table chairs from the house, and one of them had a computer.

“And we didn’t have any money,” Taylor continues.

Schumacher jokes now that she and McKay, both then in their late 20s, had ol’ reliable — the confidence that comes with youth.

“I mean, we did go to college, we got these jobs, we did fine,” she says with a tone suggesting she is engaging in humorous commentary rather than reality. “We're like, ‘Yeah, we can do it, and Joe’s real smart. This is gonna be fine.’”

But they did have some clients who followed from the trio’s former firm, where they had specialized in health care consulting. They also had a set of core values: faith, family, fairness, empowerment, mutual respect, quality, and teamwork.

And they had unwavering trust and confidence in one another and were fond adherents to something the wise Harry Truman once uttered: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

That’s more than a Hail Mary pass to build on.

Things, in fact, did turn out fine. The firm brought in $1 million in revenue that first year. Among the early revenue streams was a large company based in Houston that put the fledgling firm on retainer.

“They said, ‘We want this to succeed,’” Taylor recalls. “And they did that for at least a year, maybe a couple of years.”

The three enjoy a laugh at where the firm came from, but from that foundation of seeds, planting materials, and extremely calloused hands has come something lasting and in full bloom 25 years later.

Today, JTaylor is the largest independently owned firm in Tarrant County, employing 140, including 18 partners, and with a spacious office to do business on Hulen Street. There is likely a folding table, but it’s presumably used as a temporary breakfast buffet on occasion.

The venture has been successful because of the culture instilled by the founding partners.

JTaylor has broken out of the mold of typical firms, which often have a structure — or mindset — in which departments or individuals operate in isolation from one

another. One is doing his or her own book of business. They are responsible for this many clients and this much money because you’ve got to achieve a specific goal.

“We've never really operated that way. It's kind of funny what happens when you don't sit in the corner and count your own money all the time,” said Schumacher. “We've been so much more successful, I think, because of that. I can tell you story after story after story of someone having a problem and another partner chipping in and saying, ‘OK, I'm going to help you guys out.’

“I think people even beyond the partner group feel ownership in the firm and want it to succeed for the next generation and want everybody to have a fulfilling career, not just to make a lot of money in my own corner of the world.”

That alone is a reason to celebrate 25 years. But it wasn’t the past alone the firm marked in January. They were toasting to a bright future.

A succession plan is in place.

Mike Malloy was appointed managing partner in 2016, charged with leading the firm into its future.

Succession, Taylor reminds, is the real measure of success in professional services. Did you have somebody to hand it to? Can you maintain the culture?

“We're probably as proud about [succession] as anything,” Taylor says. “This firm has been a gift to us, and now to be able to hand it to them. The young people we have, they are really bright.”

Says McKay: “One of our core values is empowerment. We actively look for ways to take these young, bright people and empower them so that they can grow into providing the same level of service that we've always intended to provide and give them those same opportunities that we had at very young ages. More opportunity than we should have at 28 years old. The values really drive everything that we do, and I think that that shows up in how people perceive us.”

Courtney McKay, Joe Taylor, Shannon Schumacher

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Clothes Call

She decided to hang with clothes. It made all the difference.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY

Ayo Aigbe was a sophomore electrical engineering student at Texas Tech still agitated by an experience the year before while a freshman at Austin College, her first school.

“I was a freshman in college, and I remember going to my closet, taking out my favorite sweater — it was Friday night, I was so excited to wear it — only to find that it had the shoulder bumps on it,” says Aigbe.

Don’t try to say you haven’t been there.

So, while in an entrepreneurship class in Lubbock, her second year in school, she and her classmates were tasked with identifying a problem, creating a solution, and marketing it in 3 1/2 months.

She knew her problem: clothes hangers. Her solution: Hangio, a hanger that can be bent in more than six ways to store delicate tops like turtlenecks and knitwear, can hold up to one pound of clothing, and is travel friendly.

“I used that problem as my key study for the program,” Aigbe says. “While I was doing customer discovery, I found that others had the same issue, and they were willing to spend money to solve it. So, that's when I was like, ‘OK, this might be something worth doing.’”

And worth continuing. Aigbe, now 26, eventually graduated with a degree in engineering but has put that career on hold to continue building Hangio, an innovative luxury clothing care company on a mission to make clothes last. Aigbe has started with the most basic but arguably the most fundamental piece of clothing care: the hanger.

She launched in 2020, unsure how the price point of $10 a hanger would be received. She had a plan to sell out of her first batch in three months.

“I ended up being sold out in 2 1/2 days,” she says.

Aigbe says she quickly worked with her manufacturer to produce more.

A marketing Tweet she posted six or so weeks later was seen by more than six million people and with 100,000 retweets, according to the platform.

“It went viral basically. That helped me sell out, but now to a more national market,” she says. “I didn't know their names, and they were purchasing coast to coast. So, that initial market feedback and reception were really positive, and I leveraged all of that to help me hone in on more who my market was.”

Aigbe landed a partnership with a runway company that does shows all over the country. For a year, designers at these shows would be able to use Hangio hangers.

That agreement kicked off at New York Fashion Week last year.

That infusion will go toward marketing and outreach to brands she hopes to partner with.

“I want to go all the way to the moon with it and work with brands that Hangio is a good fit for,” Aigbe says.

Aigbe says she put aside a career in electrical engineering, at least temporarily, because she felt she was being “pulled elsewhere.”

“I ended up being pulled toward my business,” Aigbe says. “It’s the thing I can't stop thinking about, that just keeps me up at night. And it's where I feel like I'm being called to.”

Entrepreneurship has always been a thing for Aigbe, she says. She recalls flipping hair bows for profit in middle school and selling cupcakes and bracelets in high school.

“I didn’t understand unit economics,” she says. “All I knew was I loved those things” she was selling.

An interest in STEM and the practicality of an engineering degree sent her in that direction. Then she got a taste she couldn’t resist in that entrepreneurship class.

Aigbe continues to find a willing community of helpers at Texas Tech’s Innovation Hub and elsewhere, including Fort Worth.

“It really takes a village to build a business. I couldn't have done this alone,” she says. “And I think there are so many people who have made Hangio what it is today. I feel very grateful for my Lubbock community, my Dallas community, and my new Fort Worth community for pouring into me, for being so generous, for being such a give-first kind of mentality. I don't take that for granted. I feel like businesses should not forget about the community that really makes them and helps them grow and sustain.”

In addition to that, the company also landed a luxury B2B client and grew its national customer base in 2023.

In November, Aigbe, an Irving native, came to Fort Worth to pitch her company in the Eosera EmpowHERment pitch competition. She left with $10,000 after a second-place finish.

Ayo Aigbe

Building a Hydrogen Future

Harnyss opens its doors in Fort Worth with an energy alternative.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY

Local elected and business officials joined Harnyss in pulling back the curtain on the energy production and storage solutions company’s new headquarters in far west Fort Worth in late January.

U.S. Reps. Kay Granger (R-Fort Worth) and Roger Williams (R-Willow Park) joined Mayor Mattie Parker for festivities that included company CEO Kirby Smith and other officers demonstrating the capability of its proprietary Oasis, which they said is a “game-changer” in the production of energy for commercial and residential developments, as well as military operations around the world.

The Oasis is a “microgrid-in-a-box” as a storage unit for hydrogen and renewable energy.

The technology, company officials said, provides safe, costeffective, and clean energy, perhaps the most overarching concern in an era when stewardship of earth and global sustainability are considered paramount obligations.

The building we all stood in was powered by the Oasis.

“We like to say that Fort Worth is where innovation begins,” said Mayor Mattie Parker. “Harnyss is another example of how true that is. This company will help our state and our city remain at the forefront of the energy industry for years to come.”

The Oasis system utilizes supercapacitors, recognized for their operational advantages over lithium-ion batteries in large-scale energy storage contexts. In addition to safety and cost efficiency, the advantages also include extended operational life and lower maintenance demands.

The system binds the hydrogen to materials inside canisters, lowering the pounds-per-square-inch pressure needed, said Smith, the CEO.

Representatives from businesses around the world were in attendance as were officials from the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, which, like other island territories and nations, rely heavily on imported fossil fuels.

The dependency on diesel-generated power has been a challenge for island nations in terms of energy security, environmental sustainability, and economic development.

However, company officials said, renewable energy storage systems such as the Oasis can provide microgrids that last more than 20 years and with lower cost than diesel-generated power, creating a more resilient and sustainable energy system that benefits both the economy and environment.

Also there on Wednesday was Paul Funk, a retired four-star general who serves as an adviser to Harnyss. He spoke effusively of the possibilities of a microgrid-in-a-box on the battlefield, calling it a power source that can move “with us wherever we want to go.”

“This kind of innovation to adapt our resources to make a difference on the battlefield is a tremendous opportunity,” Funk said. “Some would call it a strategic advantage.”

Smith and Steve Pike, the company’s COO, acquired the intellectual property rights of the technology from a Michigan company in 2019.

Smith has worked in international business for much of his career, including more than 20 years’ experience in full life-cycle product development. More than half of that time has been focused on renewable energy storage. His career began in Taiwan as an assistant OEM production manager for Lerado Technologies Group.

Pike has more than 35 years’ experience in a variety of industries, including aerospace, electronics, agrochemical, railroad, and industrial equipment, with a focus in mergers, acquisitions, and operations.

He has spent the majority of his career working with partners and team members to create value through the acquisition, operation, and disposition of multiple businesses.

Granger called the technology a “great new energy product.”

Said Williams: “For a hundred years, Texas has been the energy capital of the country. And while oil and gas remain essential to our future, Texas is also home to a growing wind and solar industry. And Harnyss is a game-changer for the alternative energy industry.”

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Putting Stock in the ’Yards

Standard Meat Company building a processing plant in the Stockyards

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY

Standard Meat Company of Fort Worth will be bringing the historic Stockyards back closer to its original purpose, even if ever so slightly.

The Fort Worth company announced this week that it planned to construct its fifth protein processing plant, this one at 1101 NE 23rd St. The 166,000-square-foot plant will occupy a renovated, historic 1955 meat processing facility in Fort Worth’s North Side, a short distance from the company’s headquarters, officials said in a press release.

The contractor will be CSC Group. The architecture and engineering firm of record is the Schemmer Group.

“With this new plant, we’ll have even more flexibility to introduce cutting-edge technologies and processes, doing everything we can do to drive business forward for our clients,” said Standard Meat CEO and co-President Ben Rosenthal in a statement.

Standard Meat Company was founded in Fort Worth by Ben Rosenthal, Rosenthal’s great-grandfather, in 1935.

“With the location of our fifth plant here in the historic Stockyards area, we're not just constructing a facility, we're revitalizing a piece of our city's industrial legacy. At Standard Meat, we're all-in on Fort Worth and on bringing new investment and jobs to the place we've always called home.”

The company purchased the building for development in 2023 and has plans to install a state-of-the-art sous vide line. Expansion capacity at the new site will allow for additional sous vide lines, or other production lines as needed to explore emerging opportunities.

Adam Speirs, a longtime employee, has been named plant manager.

“We’re always thrilled to fill management positions from within the company, and with Adam Speirs, we couldn’t have asked for a better candidate,” said Ashli Rosenthal Blumenfeld, company copresident.

Clearance Granted

AyuVis receives FDA clearance for human clinical trial.

WORDS BY FORT WORTH INC. STAFF

AyuVis Research, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new generation of immunotherapies to address inflammation and infection, has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin human clinical trials on its lead compound, AVR-48.

AyuVis is developing a new generation of immunotherapies that provide a well-balanced immune response where mild activation and controlled suppression of the immune system is needed to effectively treat disease.

The go-ahead is “provides AyuVis with scientific validation from a major regulatory body for the preclinical safety and efficacy of our lead compound, AVR-48,” said David Riley, AyuVis chief medical officer, in a statement.

“We look forward to demonstrating the utility of AVR-48 in upcoming clinical trials on our path to regulatory approval,” he said.

AVR-48 is the lead drug candidate from a series of novel compounds derived from chitohexaose. As seen in preclinical research, AVR-48 has the power to:

• Prevent inflammation and tissue damage;

• Promote new lung cell growth;

• Quiet the cytokine storm when the immune system produces too many inflammatory signals, which leads to organ failure and death;

• Remain effective against multi-drug resistant infections.

This is the next step in AyuVis’ initial goal of preventing a rare pediatric disease, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, and will be the foundation that supports follow-on respiratory programs in the pipeline.

AyuVis is a client of TechFW, the nonprofit incubator that assists the growth of tech companies. AyuVis conducts its research at The University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.

The Phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and tolerability of AVR-48 in healthy adult volunteers is expected to begin in 2024 and will be partially funded by an ongoing National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Research Grant awarded last year.

“I am very excited about the IND [Investigational New Drug] approval to begin the clinical trial and very thankful to our preclinical, clinical, CMC, and regulatory team’s efforts to make this happen,” said Dr. Suchi Acharya, co-founder and CEO of AyuVis. “This is a major milestone achievement for AyuVis’ small molecule immunotherapy platform program.”

Economic Development Jolt

LG cuts the ribbon on Fort Worth assembly plant

South Korean company LG Electronics in January opened its first factory in the U.S. for assembling electric vehicle charging stations.

The site: Fort Worth, Texas.

New jobs and an evolution in the growth of America’s EV charging infrastructure were two themes celebrated among the VIPs on hand.

“This is a great day for Fort Worth with this global leader choosing to establish its U.S. manufacturing base for EV chargers and creating new jobs here,” Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker said. “We take pride in knowing that LG’s advanced EV charging stations that will be deployed across the United States will be built right here in Fort Worth.”

LG’s U.S. EV charger production factory will have an annual capacity of more than 10,000 units. Initially, EV charger operations occupy about 60,000 square feet of the 100,000-square-foot building, leaving room for expansion as the business grows in the years ahead.

The new plant, which uses 100% green power, builds on LG’s longtime presence as a corporate citizen in Fort Worth, where its million-square-foot distribution center for consumer electronics and home appliances has been located for three decades.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY IMAGES BY BRANDON WADE/LG ELECTRONICS KOREA

From left, Alec Jang, president of the LG Electronics Business Solutions Company, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, and Nicolas Min, president of LG Business Solutions USA, make the ceremonial snip of the grand opening ribbon cutting.

H.K. Suh, head of LG Electronics’ EV Charging Business Division, gives a tutorial on the capabilities of a Level 2 charger.

LG employee Lorena Hernandez assembles a Level 2 charger at the company’s first U.S. EV charger factory.

The VIPs, including Steve Montgomery, CEO and president of the Fort Worth Chamber (far left), Mattie Parker (center), and Councilman Alan Blaylock (third from right), ready themselves for the ceremonial ribbon cutting.

Jesse Smith is a technology guy. He always has been, he says.

Not the kind you might see on TV, the guy writing code locked in a dark room and drinking Red Bull.

“That's a different world than what I do, but I love the creativity aspect,” he says while on a tour of his work at a home in southwest Fort Worth. “I love the challenge of finding unique components to fit a particular design element or incorporate for a different feel or layout, like a traditional or modern or contemporary or transitional home. And then the planning that goes into that.”

Smith is the owner of Wyred AV, founded by him in 2014.

Wyred AV is a custom integration firm. It focuses on technology that enhances people's lives through the convenience and the connectivity of what technology offers. The business’s core client base is luxury residences.

“We sell all the hardware,” he says. “So, every technology aspect in this home that you see, we hand chose and installed it for the homeowner, and then we configure it and make it work.”

The curation of technology could include, but not limited to, the doorbell, speakers, lighting controls, security cameras, TV and video, automation of shades, garage doors and door locks, and pool controllers.

The homeowners are able to control the functions for each through an app called Control4.

“We bring it all together without making it feel like, you know, a sports bar or a tech geek haven,” he says.

Tech Enabler

Jesse Smith’s

Wyred AV makes luxury homes purr

with high tech.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY IMAGE BY CRYSTAL WISE

Where did you get started in this business?

I really started cutting my teeth in 2005. But I did it part time for two years prior to that. So, 22 years would be kind of my foray into the industry.

How did you start Wyred AV?

I had been subcontracting and working for two companies, kind of exclusively. And I had a vision for doing things differently than what a lot of companies did. So, in 2014 I made the leap of faith to restructure, rebrand, and start out on a new path to improve on where I thought the industry could go.

What has been the secret to success?

We have our proven process. And a lot of companies in this industry can sometimes get in trouble because they're too far outside of the lines, and then you get instability, or you get systems that don't always work or have reliability issues or become service nightmares. An easy way to explain that would be they cut too many corners. We really try our best to ensure that we're always staying within the bounds of what we know and can guarantee our work.

And then a lot of it is relationship-based. We build relationships with our customers. We have some clients that are third-generation customers. The grandparents have used us, the parents have used us, and now their kids are graduating college, getting married, building homes, and we're still servicing their systems. So service is extremely important to maintaining good relationships with our customers. Anybody can install something, but still being around after the initial sale is where a lot of our industry drops the ball. We have a very high retention rate with our customers. Industry-wide, it's actually pretty low.

And even just things like, we have a spot on our customer sheets for dog names. So, that's Sarge. [He points outside to a German shepherd.] Because we're in our customers' homes, we have to be pet people, and we're the ones invading our customers' lives.

Wyred AV is based in Colleyville and services all of Fort Worth and Dallas.

“We bring it all together without making it feel like, you know, a sports bar or a tech geek haven.”

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Bringing Tech to a Gunfight

Fort Worth businessmen say they know how to reduce gun violence.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY

Ever since the day in 1966 when Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the Tower at University of Texas with the determination to kill, gun violence has become more and more among those ills most harmful to society.

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about another victim of gun violence.

In 2021, a record number were killed by gun violence — more than 48,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and those wounded equal twice that many. Eight-in-10 U.S. murders in 2021 involved a firearm.

That number reflected a 23% increase since 2019.

Beyond all the human treasure lost, it’s an expensive problem financially, too, accounting for a massive negative impact in the tens of billions of dollars. A Harvard study put the cost at more than half a billion dollars if you also consider lost wages and productivity to business.

Two Fort Worth businessmen, Todd Hodnett and Shawn Smith, have brought to the marketplace one remedy that they say will reduce gun violence by more 50% in 10 years.

It is technology their company EvidenceIQ designed over the course of several years of research and development.

Ballistics IQ is a portable scanning device that captures and compares fired cartridge cases collected at crime scenes to provide real-time forensic-based intelligence.

It would stand to reason that profit motive and market forces would ultimately be a player mitigating the scourge of gun violence, but reducing gun crime, Hodnett says of the company, “really is something that’s near and dear to our hearts.”

“I don’t want to get political about this, but anytime there’s a huge incident both sides of the aisle stand up to put forth what they think’s gonna solve it,” Hodnett says. “Everybody just digs their heels in.

“Well, we came up with a solution that it doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you’re on. Ballistics IQ absolutely demonstrates a net positive effect on reducing gun violence because it focuses on guns that have already been involved in crimes and, most importantly, trying to get those off the street. There are no Second Amendment implications when it comes to solving gun-related cases and removing guns that have been involved in one or more gun violence crimes.”

Ballistics IQ analyzes fired cartridge casings ejected from a semiautomatic handgun or rifle at a crime scene.

Ballistics IQ is looking for two things: marks left from the firing pin and marks left from the ejector that pulls the fired cartridge casing out of the barrel and throws it to the ground.

“Those two markings are like a fingerprint to that specific gun,” Hodnett says.

In a matter of minutes, law enforcement knows how many unique guns were used at that crime scene.

That is invaluable information to detectives, who need as much realtime intelligence as they can get before conducting interviews with suspects with plenty of reason to mislead.

It’s also information that could take days to process at a typical crime lab, which likely has hundreds of casings to examine.

The ATF developed similar technology about 25 years ago. Ballistics IQ is designed to work in concert with the ATF’s

NIBIN, whose testing goes into a national database.

Ballistics IQ, about a foot tall or so, was specifically designed to work “at the edge,” or at the crime scene, to determine the best fired cartridge casing to send to NIBIN.

Simply because of logistics, it could take hours for NIBIN to deliver information depending upon the backlog of fired cartridge casings in the NIBIN lab. So, instead of sending 10 cartridge casings from the same gun to NIBIN, agencies can send the best one they find through Ballistics IQ.

Both technologies have a database. Ballistics IQ’s is local, and NIBIN’s covers the entire country.

Law enforcement departments across the country are using the technology through annual license agreements with EvidenceIQ. Among those are the cities of Denton and Plano. Denton, which has had the technology for two years, uses Ballistics IQ and NIBIN, specifically for its national database.

On the backside of the Ballistics IQ is a group of trained examiners — the Virtual Correlation Center — who analyze the data, looking for correlations to other crime scenes.

Plano handles casings analysis for a number of other agencies across North Texas, says Deion Christophe, a firearms examiner with the city. So, those cases are going through Ballistics IQ, too.

“We were able to tie crimes together pretty quickly,” Christophe says. “We’d send them off for submission, and usually within an hour, we’ll get notification that our case has been linked to another case or potential case.”

Erin Gonzales, of the city of Denton, says the department can also test fire guns that have been confiscated or found and enter those shells into the Ballistics IQ database to cross-check.

One good example of the technology’s capacity occurred in January 2021. The crime scene unit from Gwinnett County, Georgia, was called to an apartment complex, the scene of the murder of an employee of a pest control company. He had been shot in the head. One fired cartridge was collected.

Later in the day, police pulled over a

vehicle and found a pistol inside during a search.

The firearm was test fired, and all fired cartridges were scanned into Ballistics IQ and submitted for testing by EvidenceIQ Virtual Correlation Center. Within 30 minutes the examiner was able to associate the test-fired cartridge cases from the pistol found in the car with the fired cartridge case collected from the scene. The report, in conjunction with other evidence, secured an arrest warrant for a suspect.

Hodnett and Smith were partners in VaaS International Holdings, Inc. One of its first products was license plate recognition. VaaS had two lines of business, one on the commercial side for vehicle repossession and another on law enforcement side.

VaaS also developed a facial recognition product.

Hodnett and Smith sold the company’s properties, including its R&D on Ballistics IQ, to Motorola Solutions in 2019.

The two led a group in buying that technology back after COVID. They are the major stakeholders in EvidenceIQ.

Says Hodnett: “It’s an initiative that I don’t see how anybody could object to, and what we’re trying to do is use technology, and not just ours, to combine with other technologies out there that help solve crimes and gun crimes specifically.”

Golden Lots

Goldenrod Company’s play in the Cultural District will be in full bloom year-round.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY

News that a mixed-used development called “The Mullet” manifested brought uninhibited exuberance to many. A mixed-used development with business in the front and party in the back. It was unique if nothing else. And it was better than, say, The Perm. However, keen discernment and sound judgment are why John Zogg was brought on by Goldenrod Companies to be its president of the southwest region.

He took a pair of the sharpest clippers he could find to the name “The Mullet,” which was never to be the name of the development anyway. It was merely a placeholder.

“That was the first thing I did when I got here in April was to change the name,” Zogg says with a wry smile through Zoom. “Sorry, but I can’t attract corporate clients with that name. I know the reasoning, it was a placeholder, and everybody loved it. I’ve got to attract some big banks and

wealth managers and stuff. It can’t be ‘The Mullet.’”

Nothing else, however, was touched by the trimmers on what is now the highly anticipated One University development.

Located on University Drive south of Camp Bowie Boulevard, the project will include a nine-story office tower that will include 110,000 square feet of office and retail space, as well as 240 apartments and a 175-room hotel.

It is one of two major plays being made in the Cultural District by Goldenrod, the Omaha, Nebraska-based developer, which is also developing the Van Zandt.

The Van Zandt, with 250,000 square feet of office and retail space, along with luxury multifamily, will be constructed at 2816 W. Seventh St., where it intersects with Foch Street.

Total combined cost of the two will be in the neighborhood of $400 million.

The Fort Worth City Council is lending

The Van Zandt

support in the form of more than $30 million in economic incentives.

“I gotta tell you,” Zogg begins before spilling what he’s got to say, “I’ve worked in cities around the country doing things like this development and others. This is the best-run city for getting things done and being reasonable to the approach.

“The mayor always takes our calls — she’s responsive. Councilmember [Elizabeth] Beck, same thing … super responsive. In economic development, Robert Sturns and Michael Henning, they’re just superstars. It’s not like the stereotype [of bureaucracy and government]. They’re businesspeople getting it done. I’ve told a lot of people that. The city of Fort Worth is doing it right, and that’s why people come to Texas, because of governments like Fort Worth.”

Goldenrod is among those in the running to win the redevelopment project of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, home of the beloved Scott Theatre.

“I love that property,” says Zogg, a University of Texas graduate who spent almost 30 years with Crescent Real Estate. “We have competition [for the bid], but we like our plan. We think it creates a lot of revenue for the city to make sure that that is kept maintained at a proper level for a long, long time. Plus, it just activates it; it makes it a vibrant site, and redoing the Scott Theatre will be a great thing to make that a jewel versus where it is today. The bones of it are amazing.”

When we spoke, bids were being taken for the developments in the Cultural District. Zogg says he expects the same

general contractor to do both.

“We think we’ll find some efficiencies there,” he says.

The Van Zandt will break ground this spring with a delivery date of 2026. One University will be about four months behind with a completion date of 2027, Zogg says.

The name of The Van Zandt development is reference to an important part and person in Fort Worth history. Maj. K.M. Van Zandt was a banker in the late 19th and early 20th century Fort Worth. History recalls Van Zandt as a civic leader who helped bring railroads and new business and industry to the city. He represented Tarrant County in the state Legislature and was a one-time gubernatorial candidate.

At one time, Van Zandt owned 600 acres between the Trinity River and what

One University

is now the Will Rogers Memorial Center, including the Farrington Field property. The Van Zandt Cottage is the only remaining building on the property he owned. Van Zandt constructed the first bridge that spans the Trinity River on Seventh Street. It was called the Van Zandt Bridge.

“The Cultural District is just about to take off,” Zogg says. “It’s a perfect location. You think about uptown Dallas 10 to 15 years ago, that’s the Cultural District. It really is. It’s going to be a preferred location for a lot of uses, and having one of the best museum districts in the world right across the street from us is just a huge advantage.”

It also sits only a stone’s throw from Crescent Real Estate’s $250 million development.

The West Seventh corridor has been negatively impacted by a vibrant, overzealous nightlife that city officials have been trying to reform in recent years. The murder of a TCU student last year was one of a number of well-documented incidents.

The city has committed to taking the steps necessary to firm up the area, including a Public Improvement District that will augment the area with additional lighting and security cameras, and security personnel and law enforcement.

Developments like the Crescent’s and Goldenrod’s also represent marketplace reform. Goldenrod’s developments will not include leases to any bar establishment not associated with the hotel or restaurants there.

That was not something the city asked it to do.

It also stands to reason that the developments planned and to come will also likely alter the economic dynamics to a degree that the bars ultimately will be squeezed out.

“I think that the ownership of that district — and I’m not talking about us; I’m talking about the aggregate — all have their eyes on the ball to correct and make that a great place. To me, Fort Worth is a great opportunity to do something super cool for the city to attract businesses from around the country, and it should come to the Cultural District because that’s got so many pieces that are already there that are really hard to copy or make.

RECOGNIZING LISA NUSSBAUM

Ciera Bank congratulates Lisa Nussbaum on her election as Board President of Wings of Hope Equitherapy, which serves children and adults with physical, mental, or emotional challenges and disabilities.

Lisa is a successful professional in partnership with her husband Gary as the owners of BoBeche & Branch Construction and she has earned her reputation as one of Fort Worth’s elite community volunteers and leaders.

Wellspring

Jennifer Speer’s team at Higginbotham is a continual supply of health and wellness.

HENRY

Experience and idioms tell us all about the best-laid plans. They can unravel. They can hit a snag. They can go awry.

Fate remains undefeated.

“When I left high school, I was going to be a doctor,” says Jennifer Speer, “like no doubt.”

After finishing her degrees in health fitness and business management at Baylor, she had planned to go into the workforce to earn a living so that she could afford medical school.

Instead, she fell in love with health and wellness. A love story more perfect maybe than even Kelce and Swift.

“I love what I do, if you can't tell,” she says with what appears to be boundless energy and enthusiasm.

I can definitely tell, I reply.

“I’ve been here a long time, and I still love it.”

Here is Higginbotham, the Fort Worthbased insurance, human resources, and financial services firm, where since 2009 Speer has worked in the position

of director of wellness and health risk management. In that position, she leads a team of health management consultants who advise Higginbotham clients and employees in wellness programs that meet specific needs within a corporation.

It’s wellness immersion.

“We take the medical data of our clients. We look at their culture. We look at how they do their business. We look at their locations. We look at any information that a company is willing to give us,” says Speer, 46. “Then we come up with a strategy of not just for medical cost containment, but to improve the culture of the workforce and embed wellness into everything that they do.”

She estimates that the number of companies her team works with in Higginbotham’s sphere is about 300 and thousands of employees, including their own across the U.S.

The cross section of clients goes from blue collar to white collar, truck drivers to attorneys and college students. Any industry with medical insurance.

“There are so many dynamics. When you look at the employees that we’re impacting, it’s huge,” she says.

Speer is based in Houston. She often travels between various Higginbotham bases. She and I spoke at the company’s base of operations in Fort Worth.

Instead of medical school, Speer earned a master’s in exercise science and organizational development at the University of Houston, which she earned going to night school. She says she was out no longer than seemingly a few steps from the graduation platform when the school asked her to teach a class. That began a relationship in higher ed. For the better part of 17 years, up until the beginning of the pandemic when everything went online, she taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston, working with students pursuing careers in worksite wellness.

She began her career out of undergraduate school at Lockheed Martin as the wellness program manager in space operations. A stint of five years on the job was interrupted by a dream opportunity. Johnson Space Center. NASA.

“My baby,” Speer says affectionately.

WORDS BY JOHN

IMAGE BY CRYSTAL WISE

Between the job at Lockheed and NASA, Speer worked in aerospace for almost 10 years.

At NASA, she designed, implemented, and managed worksite wellness programs for more than 17,000 employees.

Speer wasn’t looking to make a move to Higginbotham. “My heart was with my aerospace family.” But Higginbotham approached her about doing the same thing for it and its clients what she had done at NASA.

She would have access to much more data and a full range of creativity and innovation.

“I’ll never forget,” she says. “I was going home. I called my husband and I said, ‘Well, I wasn’t looking for a new job, but I think I’m going to take one.’”

Higginbotham, she says, is also the only broker that doesn’t charge for the consultative service, breaking down a common disincentive.

Metabolic syndrome and specifically now Type 2 diabetes and inactivity are arch adversaries.

“It’s everything, and what we eat, I mean, and then being realistic,” she says. “Like I always tell my companies that I work with, you've got to be realistic with your expectation. I have one client, they're truck drivers, and they have this vending machine set up. So, when they check in, it’s junk. And they sit all day. And I'm like, ‘You're not providing a supportive environment. So you're telling them to do all these things, but you're not providing anything for them.’

“So, our team together — and we're in the process of revamping it; it's been so popular — put together a ‘when you're on the road and you stop at these places, what do you order?’ Just so they can pull it out and just look at it and say, ‘OK, I'm at Taco Bell.’ We call it ‘the better bet.’ Yes, fast food: the greatest? Probably not. But you know, if you're sitting there and you're trying to do something, let us help you any way we can.”

Some fast-food items are not as bad as others.

The pandemic, of course, caused a lot of handwringing, if not outright panic. Requests for mental health assistance increased, and the office environment

was turned sideways.

Speer has added to her team one with expertise in musculoskeletal rehabilitation to develop an ergonomics program.

“It's predominantly going to be marketed to remote workers because I am seeing an increase in claims and orthopedic issues with my clients who have a remote workforce,” Speer says. “We'd like to think that if you're remote, you're up, you're moving, you're doing. You're not. For some of these individuals, the only activity they got during the day was going to work. And then they're at home sitting on their couch using a laptop with a cat on their lap.”

It’s merely one more of any number of issues she and her team meet head-on.

And it’s far different from the stethoscope and white coat she thought certain she would one day be wearing.

“You know what? I really feel like I'm impacting more people than I ever would have been able to if I went into medicine,”

Speer says. “Thousands of people can benefit from what we do, and they don't even know I'm here doing it. I can come in and say, ‘Here, let's try these things, let's do this, let's move the needle this way.’ And once they do, it changes the quality of life. It's a cool feeling.”

THREE WELLNESS TIPS FROM JENNIFER SPEER:

1. When working on your personal wellness plan, determine what activities bring you joy and go with it! If you hate running, don’t make running your main form of exercise. Find a yoga class, try a social dance group, do what mentally makes you happy.

2. Always try new things. Try new foods, try a new class, make a new recipe. Trying new things is essential for growth in every aspect of life. Keep growing!

3. Your health and well-being are more than diet and exercise. Be aware of what causes you stress and how you can successfully mitigate it. Stress affects our overall health significantly. Find something that you can be consistent with, find volunteer opportunities, be OK saying ‘no’ to stressful commitments or situations.

lucy@georgeandnoonan.com

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OUR SECOND C NTUR Y

TARRANT COUNTY HEART BALL

MAY

4, 2024

I RIVER CREST COUNTRY CLUB

CO-CHAIRS

East

HONORARY CHAIRS

Fort Brewery: Will Churchill, Owner Victory Awning: Larry Buck, CEO & Chandry Manzke, President

The Holy Grail on the Trinity

The dream of the Trinity River Vision is at long last taking shape.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY

Our current civic leaders are far from the first to look across the Trinity River and dream very big dreams.

Amon Carter’s crown jewel of dreams was the canalization of the river from the Texas Gulf Coast to Fort Worth. There would be a day, he confidently envisioned, when ocean liners would dock in the city’s front yard at “Port Fort Worth.”

Carter and his close friend, humorist Will Rogers, undoubtedly staying at his 10G suite in the Fort Worth Club, drove to a spot on the river to talk vision. The account was relayed by author and time-honored Fort Worth Star-Telegram writer Jerry Flemmons in his book Amon.

The men walked around the bank, Carter showing Will where the Trinity bent around Fort Worth and explaining the canal idea in exciting detail.

Will, Flemmons wrote, listened in a silence that Amon could no longer stand.

“Well, what do you think?” Amon said.

Will, according to the account, looked at Carter, looked at the river, and then turned his eyes to the sky.

“I can see the seagulls now,” a lukewarm Will deadpanned.

Will later wrote in a newspaper column about the idea: Fort Worth has “had droughts, floods, boll weevils, cattle fever, ticks, and was struck by two visits of Jim Ferguson, but they have never tasted seawater. It’s the only thing they haven’t tasted in a bottle.”

In the 1930s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a survey of the river to determine the feasibility of canalization and flood control.

Indeed, it was studied, written about ad infinitum, and federal funding proposed. In fact, in anticipation of canalization, some highway bridges over the river were built high enough to accommodate canal traffic.

provide flood risk management along the Clear Fork and West Fork of the Trinity River.

Once completed, this Trinity River Vision will provide flood protection and recreation for more than 3,000 acres in Tarrant County.

The 1.5-mile redirection will open up five miles of shoreline and 200 acres for development just north of the courthouse.

It’s also a project that has caused the Fort Worth Republican torment and suffering, both politically and personally, since she made it her own now more than 20 years ago.

It has been one problem after another, starting with securing the necessary federal funding. Washington politics, including differences with congressional colleagues over spending priorities, the loss of earmarks, and the Trump administration, and the change in how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers evaluates projects after Hurricane Katrina were all migraines.

There were problems at home, too.

As the price of the project grew, political watchdogs — both real and the armchair variety — grew.

Carter never gave up on his vision, taking it to his grave in 1955. His son, Amon Carter Jr., took it up. It wasn’t until 1977, some 50 years after its genesis, that the music finally died on canalizing the La Santisima Trinidad — the Most Holy Trinity, as Spaniard Alonso de Leon called it.

U.S. Rep. Kay Granger’s bright blue eyes grow brilliant when the topic of the modern-day $1.1 billion Trinity River Vision — also known as the Panther Island Project — comes up. I know because I asked her about it when I recently ran into her.

She has been a true believer since the very first day the Tarrant Regional Water District began working with Streams and Valleys and the Army Corps of Engineers on the master plan to make better use of the river and preserve natural areas, while ensuring flood control.

Congressionally authorized studies determined that modifications were needed to mitigate flood risks. Those included an approximate 8,400-foot bypass channel, three isolation gates, a low-water dam, and valley storage mitigation sites (Gateway Park, Ham Branch, Riverside Park, Rockwood Park West, Samuels Avenue, and University Drive) to

The project made the Citizens Against Government Waste’s annual “Pig Book,” which lists the worst porkbarrel spending projects in the nation.

“Boondoggle” was a favorite crutch phrase of the critics, as was the allegation of nepotism when Granger’s son, J.D. Granger, was named executive director of the project.

But, make no mistake, Granger remains a fervent true believer.

In 2022, at last, Granger, then the Republican leader on the House Appropriations Committee (today, she is the chair), and Fort Worth Democrat Marc Veasey secured the long-awaited infusion of federal money that will allow for the completion of the final design of all project components and construction of the bypass channel.

It was $403 million in total, appropriated as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2022. The Corps received $20 million more later in the year.

It was a “great day for Fort Worth,” Granger said at the time, adding that with the city’s explosive growth comes the need to upgrade its safeguard against the ravages of flooding, which the city’s history is so familiar with. The city was devastated by floods in 1922 and 1949. In the aftermath of the 1949 flood, Fort Worth received federal funds to build an $11 million floodway. Congressman Jim Wright spoke at its dedication.

Voters, meanwhile, approved a $7 million bond to finance levee improvements. That money also financed Marine Creek Lake and Cement Creek Lake in the watershed of Marine Creek, a tributary of the Trinity.

The Army Corps also undertook a makeover of the river. The river channel was straightened and widened, levees turned sturdier. Benbrook Lake was also created.

The city, however, has transformed over the course of 70-plus years.

The flood of 1949 washed out the West Seventh corridor and made a mess of the Stockyards.

Granger announced last year that she would not seek another term, and as she begins her final year in office, she says she feels good where the project stands.

“Yes,” she says, “but it should have not been this hard. This project was important, and we did so much good work on it.”

Only to see the floor fall through.

The Trinity River Vision, unlike and slightly less ambitious than Amon Carter’s, will be completed.

The full realization of the development remains years away.

Last year, the city contracted with HR&A Advisors to provide analysis and consulting services that will guide real estate and economic development strategies for Panther Island. The value of this was $560,000.

HR&A has previously worked on similar districts and waterfront projects throughout the country, such as the Anacostia River waterfront revitalization in Washington, D.C., Buffalo Bayou in Houston, the Ion Innovation District near Rice University, Broadway Station in Denver, Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, and the master plan for the University of Texas’ research campus.

The firm called Panther Island “crucial to the region’s economic development. The scale and location can help capture and fuel long-term residential and employment growth.”

As such, it recommended moving its original development aspirations from dense residential with some commercial to mixed-use with an entertainment hub and outdoor recreation to attract companies and talent to the city — a place to work, live, and play.

success by spearheading the development and delivery of numerous projects in Austin.

“The timing of this legacy transaction continues the momentum building on the island over the last 18 months,” says Sarah LanCarte. “We could not be more excited for our clients and share our enthusiasm for what the new owners are capable of. Few opportunities like this exist in major cities across the country. We could not be more enthusiastic about the future of Panther Island and the lasting impact it will have on the city of Fort Worth.”

It wouldn’t be Panther Island without a hangup, however. Late last year, we learned of one.

City officials said that it was behind in rerouting utilities out of the path of the Army Corps’ planned bypass channels. There are 14 stormwater, sewer, and water utilities that must be relocated, assistant city manager Dana Burghdoff told a meeting of the Trinity River Vision Authority board in December.

Also last year, LanCarte Commercial Real Estate said that it had brokered the sale of 26 acres of privately owned land on Panther Island.

The sale represented the largest single capital investment for land from the private sector.

Sarah LanCarte, Daniel Shelley, and Darren Cain of LanCarte Commercial represented the seller, Panther Acquisition Partners, Ltd., a private Houston-based real estate investment firm. Seco Ventures, a commercial real estate development and investment firm in Austin, acquired the portfolio asset.

“We are incredibly pleased to have reached this agreement with Seco,” said Mark Brock, managing partner at Lionhead Real Estate, which helped market the property. “This transaction allows us to partially exit the investment while maintaining a significant ownership stake alongside our partners. We have spent the last several years consolidating a hugely strategic land package on Panther Island and believe we have partnered with the right family at the right time.”

The asset spans nine parcels over 26 acres of land, making it the largest private assemblage on Panther Island. Over the last several decades, the Seco partners have established an impressive history of

The work must be done in the north bypass channel by this summer and by the fall in the south bypass channel if it is to stay on the Corps’ schedule.

Contractors have struggled with challenges in submitting the documentation necessary to satisfy the Army Corps’ requirements for boring through the flood levees, Burghdoff says.

“So, our staff has been meeting weekly with them and trying to bring that together,” she says. Burghdoff also says the city has encountered problems working with Fort Worth & Western Railroad. The city needs to amend an agreement so contractors moving utilities can work underneath the railroad’s right-of-way.

The city said last year that it expected the total cost for the relocations to be between $53.8 million and $60.5 million. The city is obligated to pay the upfront costs, but the Tarrant Regional Water District will take care of the final bill using $250 million in flood control bonds approved by voters in 2018.

The delay, Burghdoff estimates, would be a few months.

Nonetheless, the Trinity River Vision is finally coming together.

“The pieces are really coming together for Panther Island,” Robert Sturns, economic development director for the city of Fort Worth, said last year. “Local partners and the business community are making a strong economic development push at the district, but we want to be smart about how we do it.”

He who laughs last, laughs best. So, we’ve been told anyway.

And when Fort Worth’s ambitious, albeit highly scrutinized, Trinity River Vision is fully realized, the city will have the knowledge of security from flood waters and a pearl on its Trinity River.

And Granger’s legacy in public life will be secure for posterity.

The redirection of the Trinity River will create 200 acres for mixed-used development.

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texas tea

It’s not petroleum. It’s, like, really tea. And Justin Howe has found the secret sauce to making his variation a national brand.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY IMAGES BY CRYSTAL WISE

For a few brief seconds, Justin Howe looks past me scanning his memory while trying to answer a question I just posed. It is representative of the sincerity with which he’s pondering. Why didn’t anybody before you think to do with tea what Starbucks did with coffee? “That’s a good question,” he says before giving it one more scan. “I don’t know. We just took tea out of a restaurant and put it in a store. And we do it really well, obviously.”

Tea has been as popular here as long as there has been a here. Well, as long as there has been an America.

The last time I checked, more than half of U.S. voters couldn’t name a single U.S. Supreme Court justice. Vice president? Probably. I think.

But you can bet your bottom dollar they can tell you about the hopping mad American colonists, the Sons of Liberty, they called themselves, who dumped chests of imported tea from the British East India Company in the Boston Harbor as a protest of the king’s imposed taxes on a favorite beverage.

It was taxation without representation, they charged.

It kicked off a whole big to-do that was widely chronicled and disseminated in history books. Or most history books anyway.

Don’t tread on our tea.

Tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world not named water, the champagne of the earth.

It’s a simple preparation of pouring hot water over cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. The first recording of tea described it as a medicinal beverage in China in the third century.

Merchants helped quickly to spread its popularity across continents.

And, yes, in the early 19th century, Great Britain made fashionable the afternoon tea, a break from one’s routine in which tea is served alongside sandwiches and baked goods, such as scones. That tradition was imported by colonists.

The flavor of tea varies by where the tea leaves are harvested and how they are grown and processed. Black tea is the most popular worldwide, followed by green, oolong, and white tea.

Someone started pouring it over ice. Talk

about groundbreaking.

In the Deep South, drinkers began shoveling sugar into their tea and calling it sweet tea. East Carolina University conducted a study that demonstrated a correlation between sweet tea and the region’s “diabesity” epidemic.

The “Sweet Tea Belt,” according to the study, includes parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

The same area, researchers noted, is also called the “stroke belt.”

Notice, however, there was no mention of Texas.

That’s not to say we don’t drink our share of tea sweet. Some do. But on the whole, we want simply tea.

And, so, from that day in the third century until now, no one has done what Howe

has managed to do.

Make a Starbucks-esque slash with tea.

Howe, a son of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle who has done a little hunting in his day, and his team are doing it quite prolifically.

Howe is the co-founder and CEO of Fort Worth-based HTeaO, a franchise-based company that is the dominant, first-to-market store that sells tea. Only tea.

It’s exactly what Starbucks did.

“Man, it’s so crazy,” says Howe. “‘You sell only iced tea?’ I get that question twice a week. How did Starbucks take coffee out of a pancake restaurant and put it on the corner of the street? It’s so obvious. How did no one think of this kind of concept for tea?”

In January, HTeaO opened its 100th franchise in College Station.

The celebration was fit for the milestone. This ribbon-cutting ceremony included the accoutrements of kid-friendly events, food trucks, and, of course, lots of tea.

The store is franchisee Bryan Benson’s fifth location, including three in San Angelo. His College Station store is one of the largest storefronts in the chain, almost 3,000 square feet. He is hoping to add two more, his general manager Paul Torres told the The Eagle.

Other franchisees include former NFL receiver Roy Williams, who had a stint with the Dallas Cowboys. Williams has a store in his hometown of Odessa.

The corporate office employs 90 full time and between 170-200 part-timers.

In addition to Williams, HTeaO also has an affiliation with PGA Tour golfer Ryan Palmer, a friend of Howe’s from Amarillo. Of those 26 flavors, one is the “Ryan Palmer,” a takeoff of the widely popular “Arnold Palmer.”

More recently, HTeaO formed a partnership with “Yellowstone” actor Cole Hauser. Soon, all 100 and counting stores will feature the option of coffee with handcrafted coffee and espresso-based drinks featuring Free Rein Coffee’s signature blends.

HTeaO launched officially in 2018 after years of planning. Business is booming with over-the-top demand for the company’s 26 current flavors, all made naturally — no powders or syrups — some of them sweet, and you can mix and match them. They’re all brewed with water from a mini-treatment plant on-site at each location. To have

good tea, after all, requires good water that tastes the same, regardless of the city.

To date, 400 other franchises are at some level of the pipeline leading to development. In total, they’re spread around 14 states, Arizona to the Carolinas and Florida as bookends.

The stores do actually sell more than tea, but not much. It’s licensed to sell Yeti products. And you can also pick up a healthy snack.

One can also buy the water.

HTeaO is among the fastest-growing companies in the Southwest, ranking No. 59 in Inc. magazine’s list of private companies based in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The listing recognizes up-andcoming fast-growth companies in key regions across the country. HTeaO, one of 166 companies in the Southwest recognized for its growth from 2019-21, experienced a two-year revenue growth of 240%.

HTeaO is headquartered in an office on Markum Ranch Road in west Fort Worth and with 100,000 square feet of warehouse near Meacham International Airport on the North Side.

“It felt culturally [that] this is where we belong,” he says while we chat in the store in Lake Worth. “I had to move the supply chain component of HTeaO to the metroplex.”

There was no supply chain for the tea concept, so, he created. TeaBevCo is a subsidiary of HTeaO. There are four entities that make HTeaO go. In addition to TeaBevCo, there is a real estate development company, an operations company, and the franchise operation.

“We had to create it,” he says. “I mean, we control every SKU. And a convenience store solution is unreliable at best. And then the idea of you controlling what you sell is ridiculous. So, we had to.”

Out of the ruins of the Great Depression came a number of business concepts that flourished in the aftermath.

One was King Kullen, a grocery store chain based in Long Island. According to the company, Michael Cullen invented the supermarket format when he turned a Queens warehouse into a grocery store. The downscale setting allowed him to keep prices low for families with unemployed breadwinners.

We’ve all heard of Ocean Spray Cranberries. During the downturn, rather than com-

pete, three cranberry companies pooled their resources.

Likewise, HTeaO’s founding is in the ashes of the ruinous Great Recession of 2008-09.

Entrepreneurs possess a range of characteristics that enable them to succeed. They are visionary, creative, and innovative leaders, for one. Two, they are tolerant to risk. They are adaptive to unforeseen circumstances. And finally, they are resourceful and resilient problem-solvers.

They are also, all of them will tell you, often damn lucky. Had a miraculous fog not appeared all of the sudden, George Washington would have been toast in 1776.

Good fortune is part of the formula.

Howe’s mother and stepfather owned a hamburger restaurant in Amarillo. With disposable income hindered by the recession, Kim and Gary Hutchens’ restaurant was suffering.

Concerned about business traffic during the downturn, his stepfather had an idea: set up six flavors of tea to lure the thirsty.

I change the subject momentarily on Howe as we stand chatting in the store on Paul Meador Road.

I’m sipping on a blueberry tea.

So, has anyone in your immediate family ever worked for someone else?

Howe begins to shake his head from side to side before returning his full attention to me.

“Not that I can recall,” he says before giving it one more think. “Not that I can recall, no.”

It is an ethos passed down, the seeming invisible thread weaving through the tapestry of family life that guides behaviors, decisions, and interactions.

Entrepreneurship and self-reliance — family values, without a doubt — are the cornerstones of Howe’s personality and attitude toward living — they are his identity.

“I grew up watching everyone around me start businesses,” says Howe, 46.

His mother was a hair stylist who owned a big salon and owned the property it sat on in Amarillo. She cut hair 12 hours a day, six days a week, Howe says. She leased spaces to other stylists.

His father made cabinets for a living. From that he subsequently became a general contractor and started building high-end custom homes.

“They did all the nonlicensed trades

Customers have a choice of 26 flavors. Or, they can mix and match.

in-house, concrete, dirt work,” Howe says. “We framed them, we did all the roofing, we did all the masonry, we did everything, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing.”

His mother married his stepfather when Howe was 11. His stepfather’s family owned restaurants. Howe got a taste of that, too.

“I wasn’t great in school, so I ended up doing a lot of onion peeling in the back of the restaurant. I grew up in the back of the restaurant. So, through that, I knew I didn’t want to be in the restaurant business or in the construction business.”

Those formative moments.

He laughs.

Howe’s first authentic experience of entrepreneurship — aside from mowing grass — was the snow cone stand his stepfather owned. It was in front of the hamburger restaurant the family owned, Buns Over Texas. The stand was called Snowballs Over Texas. The restaurant’s business had picked up significantly.

“He said, ‘If you’ll just run this thing, you can have it,’” Howe says. “I said, ‘I’m in.’ I took it over; started running it. He owned all the assets. I operated it with my own sort of entity. I went and got my health department permit, self-tax permit, filed the 941 account

from the IRS to pay employees. I did all that. And I vividly remember going through all of that frantically trying to get all these regulatory things that I needed. And then we ran it for two summers. It was great.”

He next headed to school, leaning in on something else that resonated with him in those early days.

There’s a good story out there about how Amon Carter became infatuated with airplanes. Cal Rodgers, the guy who in 1911 made the before-unthought-of flight from the Atlantic to the Pacific, flew into Texas around that same time. The daredevil was said to be racing an eagle. He set his plane in a pasture on the North Side. More than 10,000 people were reportedly there to greet him.

The first in line to shake his hand, so the story goes, was Amon Carter. And from that day forward, he worshipped airplanes.

Howe fell in love with them at an early age, too.

Howe grew up hearing about his grandfather’s life as a radio operator on the B-29. His father loved the airspace, and his uncle was an air traffic controller.

While his school buddies were dreaming about being a pro athlete or firefighter or no telling what, Howe was dreaming about the skies.

“I wrote a deal when I was a kid; I wanted to be a pilot,” he says. “It was just one of those dreams as a kid.”

After graduating from Amarillo High School, he went off to do it, attending the Spartan School of Aeronautics and Technology in Tulsa. His design was to go to Frank Phillips in Borger to finish a four-year program. But the school went bankrupt.

But by October 2001, he had an instructor’s license and an associate in aviation science. He has been a professional pilot ever since.

In 2001, he began instructing and piloting for a charter company. He also fought forest fires for the Forest Service for four summers.

“I did all kinds of different stuff just trying to build flight time.”

His first real significant dip into entrepreneurship was a business managing planes for individuals, families, and businesses. Through that, he started buying and selling jets.

One of those planes he managed and

flew belonged to Hastings Entertainment, an Amarillo-headquartered retail chain that sells books, movies, music, and video games. It also functioned as a video rental shop. At its height, Hastings had 126 superstores, located mostly in the Heartland and Rocky Mountain states and in college towns.

Howe learned something from Hastings that would serve him well in the years to come.

Howe’s jet service business today only serves the HTeaO fleet, which is based out of Meacham. Yet, it serves him well. Howe and Andrew Hawes, HTeaO’s director of development, can easily set off for locales to check potential pad sites and markets. The two were headed to Amarillo the day after we spoke and to Arkansas the day after that.

They had been in Tennessee recently before doing the same thing.

An hour and a half to Nashville. Two hours to Houston and another 30 minutes home.

“Piece of cake,” he says. “It makes it nice to be able to put boots on the ground and make decisions and meet people.”

In addition to the jets, Howe ultimately did get into the construction business and residential real estate. He had what he describes as a “big portfolio” of residential rent houses. He still owns a granite countertop business in Amarillo.

Howe’s company was building 1,500- to 2,200-square-foot houses, taking homes on trade and then owner-financing them.

The model all changed in 2008.

Large banks which traded in credit default swaps were forced to declare bankruptcy when a large number of the underlying credit instruments defaulted at once. That all had a trickle-down effect. The federales put regulations on hard money lenders.

“A residential guy could only do eight deals a year,” Howe says. “And, so, that kind of took me out of business.”

Whereas he had been on an upward trajectory in real estate and construction, his life changed overnight. He had dozens of homes in inventory when the market fell apart.

“I almost went bankrupt in 2008,” he says. “It was a very painful season.”

His mother and stepfather were feeling the wallop, too, at Buns Over Texas, their build-your-own burger restaurant concept. They needed to create another reason for

people to come into the store.

His stepfather took a flyer on tea.

Howe will never forget 2008, of course. It was a defining moment.

“Everyone was always on red alert,” he says, “trying to figure out how to save our businesses. The whole world is crashing around us. What do we do?”

The concept of Buns Over Texas is in the spirit of the tongue-twisting Fuddruckers, though Howe believes Doodles, Buns Over Texas’ predecessor, beat Fuddruckers to the concept of building your own burger.

Gary Hutchens believed he might be able to get hamburger sales up through tea.

When his stepfather proposed the idea of six kinds of tea, Howe immediately thought of women in his construction company office who would run across town to a fast-food chicken restaurant simply to buy tea.

They raved about the tea. And their runs over there were daily.

“They were infatuated with this tea,” Howe recalls.

The tea tactic worked, so much so that sales at Buns Over Texas were up 15% coming out of the 2008 turmoil, Howe says. The Hutchens’ restaurant business was not only saved, it was healthy, so healthy, in fact, that they bought another pad site and built another restaurant, a new home for Buns Over Texas. On the back end of the building, he added a drive-thru tea shop.

“We were in a big shopping center that was owned by an institutional investor,” Howe says. “You can’t just buy pad sites from guys that don’t answer the phone. My stepdad was tenacious enough to get a decision-maker on the phone, and he bought a 35,000-square-foot pad site.

Watching all this, Howe remembers, was “par for the course.”

“Every day of my life there was always a new idea.”

Gary’s iced tea shop at the hamburger restaurant was called “Texas Tea.”

If you go into an HTeaO shop, you’ll see lots of Yeti merchandise available for purchase. That started in Gary’s Texas Tea.

Gary had gone to Academy and bought coolers, which he was able to immediately sell in a matter of days. Howe, through his granite countertop business, was an associ-

ate of the Selders family, Yeti’s founders. He facilitated a formal agreement to be a Yeti provider.

Anyway, over the course of three years, Texas Tea was catching on.

Howe and Hutchens partnered to do something bigger — like, nationally.

“They said, ‘We think this is a real concept,’ and I had been paying attention and thought it was gaining some momentum,” Howe says. The process to launch HTeaO took six years, starting with building a prototype store in Amarillo. A testing ground for going all tea, all the time, on good real estate, Howe says.

“I thought it was crazy, too,” Howe says,

“but we built the store. We had major problems with the model at first, but we solved those. When we started to gain momentum and real volume, we had significant interest in franchising.

“I didn’t know anything about franchising.”

To wrap his head around it, he became a franchisee, buying into three stores of a brand “I wish to leave unnamed.”

“I was interested emotionally in the experience of what it was like to have royalty fees sucked out of my checking account like a magic trick on Friday,” he jokes. Howe came on board in 2012. They started to imagine and design a back-end infrastructure to be a national brand. In 2014, they launched a second proof-of concept in Midland.

HTeaO launched in 2018.

“All those years, there was lots of work done, lots of work done, all to build a foundation of a national brand,” Howe says. “Supply chain, real estate, construction, operations, franchising. There were all kinds of different back-end infrastructure that had to be built.

“We went slow to go fast in a sense.”

As it concerned the supply chain, he returned to his life as a pilot and his work with Hastings. All experience is valuable.

Hastings created its own supply chain through another company it formed, Anderson Merchandisers, which is still in business. Anderson Merchandisers supplied Hastings.

“That fascinated me very early,” Howe says. “I knew the family and knew the operations and just was fascinated by that they solved their own internal problem with their own supply chain. And then you look at some of these other QSR [Quick Service Restaurant] brands that control their own supply chain. There’s just so many advantages.”

The mini-treatment plant on-site at each location was Gary’s idea. He had been doing it since introducing tea at Buns Over Texas.

The water is one of the secrets to success, Howe says, coyly. There are others that he won’t tell me, despite my queries.

The secret, though, is out about HTeaO.

Last year, two Dallas private-equity firms Crux Capital and Trive Capital acquired a minority stake in the company. The investment, Howe says, enables employees to participate in equity in the company. The investment, he says, also enables a focus on unit-level economics and support of the franchisees and allows his retirement-age parents to do more of that.

The new partners also bring operational expertise to the table.

Howe is the company’s largest shareholder, but the equity guys are “real partners.”

“They’re super close friends of mine. We work on a daily and hourly basis. I don’t have … my knowledge is what’s obvious to me, and as we grow to 500 or 1,000 stores, I think it’s wise for me to gain some partners who have been down that road before,” Howe says. “This was all a super carefully orchestrated alignment of interests between every single party.”

All in a partnership designed to moving forward on this enterprise that the Brits never dreamed of talking about at their fancy afternoon teas.

Young tea enthusiasts stand outside the new HTeaO in College Station.

SAVE TH E DATE

our sweet 16!

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2024

HURST CONFERENCE CENTER

The Girl Scouts of Texas Oklahoma Plains’ Annual Women of Distinction Luncheon brings together and celebrates community leaders who embody what it means to make the world a better place and help empower the girls we serve.

For sponsorship and event information, please contact Tasha Reid at treid@gs-top.org

2024 HONOREES

Rising Star

Molly Schmid, Senior Girl Scout

O Outstanding Corporate Partner

Pioneer Natural Resources

M Man Enough to Be a Girl Scout

Steven D. Morris, Theatre Arlington Executive Producer

L Lifetime Achievement

Debra Finney, Lifetime Girl Scout

W Woman of Distinction

Sandra Garcia, BNSF, Public Affairs Manager

Special thanks to:

Top Commercial Brokers and Agents

2024

Here are our 2024 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.

2024 Top Commercial Brokers and Agents

BROKERS

Tim Bates Worth Commercial Real Estate

Michael Berkowitz Colonial Commercial Real Estate

Jerry Bolz Worth Commercial Real Estate

Carl Brown SVN Trinity Advisors

LeAnn Brown Silver Oak Commercial Realty

Alex Bryant Street Realty

Todd Burnette JLL

Stephen Coslik The Woodmont Company

Lane Cowden Cowden Real Estate

George Curry JLL

David Dunn SVN Dunn Commercial

Clifton Ellis Ellis & Tinsley

William Ellis Ellis & Tinsley

Eric English English Realty

Jordan Foster Peyco Southwest Realty

Dak Hatfield Hatfield Advisors

Jeff Jackson NAI Robert Lynn

Jim Kelley Champions DFW Commercial Realty

Whit Kelly Transwestern Real Estate Services

Sarah LanCarte LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Tim Lancaster TLC Realty

Christopher Leighton Vision Commercial Real Estate

Scott Lowe Vision Commercial Real Estate

Jeff Marek Vision Commercial Real Estate

Taylor Marks Woodcrest Capital

Matt Matthews SVN Trinity Advisors

Jonathan McDaniel NAI Robert Lynn

Kent McKeever Ellis & Tinsley

Matt McWilliams MCM Real Estate Advisors

Vic Meyer Holt Lunsford Commercial

Richard Minker Worth Commercial Real Estate

Clint Montgomery SVN Trinity Advisors

Britton New GT Industrial Properties

Will Northern Northern Crain Realty

Don Phifer Phifer & Associates

Trenton Price Vision Commercial Real Estate

Grant Pruitt Whitebox Real Estate

Beaux Riley Advisors Commercial Real Estate

Donnie Rohde Tarrant Commercial Real Estate Services

Joe Rudd Transwestern Real Estate Services

Robert Sawyer Formation Real Estate

Gary Schragin Landhold Advisors

Randy Scott Vision Commercial Real Estate

Bob Scully CBRE

Roger Smeltzer Vision Commercial Real Estate

Al Sorrels Majestic Realty Co.

Courtney Stanford SVN Dunn Commercial

James Stein CBRE

Chris Stewart Vasseur Commercial Real Estate

Benjamin Sumner Centurion Real Estate

Charles “C.B.” Team Ellis & Tinsley

Bill Tinsley Ellis & Tinsley

Gary Vasseur Vasseur Commercial Real Estate

Eric Vickers Hatfield Advisors

Brice Wells CBRE

Julie Wilks LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Ryan Wood TCRG Properties

SALES AGENTS

David Adams The Woodmont Company

David Aldrich William C. Jennings Company

Steve Aldrich Hillwood Development Corporation

Brandon Alexander LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

David Barber Formation Real Estate

Jill Bayne Vision Commercial Real Estate

Justin Beck Whitebox Real Estate

Gavin Behr Transwestern Real Estate Services

Stone Beyer Woodcrest Capital

Erik Blais Bradford Companies

James Blake SVN Trinity Advisors

Jake Blankenship NAI Robert Lynn

Paul Blight Glacier Commercial Realty

Zach Boatwright Vision Commercial Real Estate

Keaton Brice Holt Lunsford Commercial

Darren Cain LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Jenny Carlstrom LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Cole Carter Peyco Southwest Realty

2024 Top Commercial Brokers and Agents

Matt Carthey Holt Lunsford Commercial

Luke Clardy Bradford Companies

Reilly Clark Holt Lunsford Commercial

Riley Dow Lancarte Commercial Real Estate

Bryan Dyer The Woodmont Company

Eduardo Elizondo SVN Trinity Advisors

Barrett England Vision Commercial Real Estate

Curtis Evans Keller Williams Fort Worth

Keith Fisher Centurion Real Estate

Brooke Ford SVN Trinity Advisors

Jack Forney Centurion Real Estate

Rachel Forslund The Woodmont Company

Benjamin Gehrke LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Jeff Givens Transwestern Real Estate Services

Andy Goldston Citadel Partners

Kevin Goodman Vision Commercial Real Estate

Trey Goodspeed Holt Lunsford Commercial

Eric Goodwin

Champions DFW Commercial Realty

Blake Grable Transwestern Real Estate Services

Thomas Grafton Holt Lunsford Commercial

Tracy Gray Holt Lunsford Commercial

Cameron Haddad Vision Commercial Real Estate

Todd Hawpe Transwestern Real Estate Services

Hunter Hayes NAI Robert Lynn

Bruce Henderson

Keller Williams Realty LoneStar DFW

Slater Howe Worth Commercial Real Estate

Todd Hubbard NAI Robert Lynn

Grant Huff Transwestern Real Estate Services

JP Humphrey III Advisors Commercial Real Estate

George Jennings Holt Lunsford Commercial

Kirk Kelly Transwestern Real Estate Services

Garrison Lackey Transwestern Real Estate Services

Parker LanCarte LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Brent Landfried Transwestern Real Estate Services

John Laudenslager Northern Crain Realty

Blake Lloyd Holt Lunsford Commercial

Lon Lloyd Champions DFW Commercial Realty

Marshall Mays Colliers

Jake McCoy The Woodmont Company

Mark McCoy Marcus & Millichap

Joe McLiney NAI Robert Lynn

Chris Mendez SCM Real Estate

Jack Mock The Woodmont Company

Ross Moncrief Holt Lunsford Commercial

Bobby Montgomery NAI Robert Lynn

Wes Mugarian Street Realty

Daniel Mullen Citadel Partners

Dick Myers Vasseur Commercial Real Estate

Jake Neal Holt Lunsford Commercial

Michael Newsome NAI Robert Lynn

Jakob Nunez Vision Commercial Real Estate

Chase Parten Woodcrest Capital

Katherine Petrie LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Nancy Plum Office Equity Solutions

Leland Prowse Transwestern Real Estate Services

Samuel Rhea Hillwood Development Corporation

Blake Rogers JLL

David Schulenburg Global Fund Investments

Carter Sells Holt Lunsford Commercial

Daniel Shelley LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Geoff Shelton JLL

Steve Shrum Glacier Commercial Realty

Bill Syblon Vision Commercial Real Estate

Nick Talley LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

Lyndon Todd Transwestern Real Estate Services

Kyle Valley Majestic Realty Co.

Nathan Vasseur Vasseur Commercial Real Estate

Deborah Walls Glacier Commercial Realty

David Walters CBRE

Benson Williams LanCarte Commercial Real Estate

William Wilson Holt Lunsford Commercial

Stacey Yearian Glacier Commercial Realty

Pictured: Owner Shaun White and Family.

Colleyville Woman’s Club

E Ka Wai Nani

By e beautiful water

LUNCH WITH THE GIRLZ

Fashion Show & Luncheon Benefit

Hurst Conference Center

Deborah Ferguson - Emcee | RSC Productions NBC 5 - DFW

Live & Silent Auctions | Prized Pineapple Pick | Photo Booth

BOUTIQUE FASHIONS

Austin Lorin w Dillard’s w Malouf’s w Rose & Rivets w Sai Designers

Scout & Molly’s Boutique w Silk Threads w Xar Clothier

Join us in celebrating our signature event featuring professional models & tropical pre-show fun. Don your favorite Hawaiian or upscale resort wear to help us raise charitable funds for scholarships & grants.

High-visibility support opportunities available

Sponsored by

CWC’s 44-Year Legacy of “Caring With Commitment” c-w-c.org

TheRegistry

Fort Worth’s Commercial Brokers and Agents

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.

TheRegistry Fort Worth’s Commercial Brokers and Agents

Bell Realty Company

FOCUS: Bell Realty Company is committed to client success through service. “Understanding our client’s objectives and risk tolerance is at the core of our foundation, their success is our success.” BACKGROUND:

Owner Jonathan Bell started his banking career at 19, gaining his Series Investment licenses before transitioning to commercial lending. “Through various banking roles, I acquired a deep understanding of underwriting, financial analysis, and investment suitability and developed a true passion to serve my clients.” AWARDS: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 Top 500 Tarrant County Real Producer Award. UNIQUE APPROACH: Bell Realty has strategically added select associates with robust backgrounds that collectively deliver exceptional results. A firm commitment to continuous improvement, collaboration, integrity, and accountability is required of all

associates. SPECIALTY: Full-service investor representation, portfolio analysis consulting, identifying off market opportunities. FUTURE PLANS: Exciting new additions include Ariel Romo, to serve builders in new developments. Patricia Ruiz, to serve commercial clients and commercial banking partners. Partnered with Andrew Patterson, Bell Patterson Development has acquired a 1-acre site in Arlington’s Entertainment District, approximately 24,000 square feet spread over multiple parcels. PICTURED: (left to right) Ariel Romo, Eduardo Castillo, Lizzet Bell, Jonathan Bell, Marlo Velazquez, Andrew Patterson, Patricia Ruiz.

BELL REALTY COMPANY

201 E. Abram St., Ste. 110 • Arlington, Texas 76010 • 682.219.8210

Silver Oak Commercial Realty

Russ Webb, CCIM, LeAnn Brown, Jim Leatherwood

FOCUS: Investment sales, medical/professional owner-occupant buildings, leasing, land/farm & ranch/recreational sales; pad-site sales and national retailer site selection/expansions. RECOGNITIONS: D Magazine CEO Power Broker; Grapevine Chamber of Commerce Chairman’s Award; Grapevine Rotary Club Rotarian of the Year 2022; People of Action Award, Cross Timbers Rotary Club; Best of Denton County Commercial Broker; Fort Worth Business Press Largest Commercial Real Estate Brokers and Developers. UNIQUE APPROACH: Owning your own properties helps us put ourselves in our client’s shoes to get the optimum results for our clients. GOALS: Hire seasoned agents; look at new technology and ways to make life easier for our clients. FUTURE PLANS: Have a daily ‘pulse’ of what our real estate market is doing. Continue to foster relationships – with businesses, property owners, city officials, bankers, and contractors within the communities that we serve. INDUSTRY CHALLENGES: Interest rate volatility and continued office market factors since COVID and brokerage fees, to name a few. WHAT SETS THEM APART: We treat every transaction with our clients as if it were our own real estate asset. We don’t take a listing just to put a sign up. Our firm works hard — we come in early and stay late until the job is completed to 100% satisfaction of our clients. PICTURED: Russ Webb, LeAnn Brown, and Jim Leatherwood.

SILVER

OAK COMMERCIAL REALTY

920 S. Main St., Ste. 100 • Grapevine, Texas 76051 817.849.8282 • silveroakcre.com labrown@silveroakcre.com; jleatherwood@silveroakcre.com; rwebb@silveroakcre.com

Street Realty

Alex Bryant and Wes Mugarian

FOCUS: Development, acquisitions, agency leasing, tenant representation, and property management.

RECOGNITIONS: Fort Worth Business Press 40 under 40; Fort Worth Inc. Leaders in Commercial Real Estate, 2022 – 2024. UNIQUE APPROACH: Our service line diversity allows us to analyze transactions from all aspects of the commercial real estate industry. Regardless of the transaction type, this insight allows us to provide customized solutions that align with the goals of our customers. GOALS: Continue growing Street Realty into the most recognizable and respected commercial real estate brand in Fort Worth (and beyond). FUTURE PLANS: Recruiting and retaining top talent are top priorities for our firm. Additionally, we are constantly reviewing technology across our platform to increase productivity and drive revenue.

INDUSTRY CHALLENGES: Political uncertainty –national debt, fed monetary policy, and geopolitical issues all have a tremendous impact on the commercial real estate industry. WHAT SETS THEM APART: Our unique ability to create and execute customized solutions that achieve unexpected outcomes. PICTURED: Alex Bryant and Wes Mugarian.

3909 Hulen St., Ste. 350 Fort Worth, Texas 76107 streetrealty.com

STREET REALTY

The One Financial Risk You Can’t Ignore

WORDS BY JOHN LOYD

While I’ve always considered myself to have a strong work ethic and disciplined habits, a young child (or children) can sometimes throw you for a loop. With the randomness of a child’s schedule (play dates, birthday parties, various activities, along with hearing “Watch this, Daddy!” from two beautiful girls umpteen times a day), I found myself years ago reading a book called The Power of Full Engagement. The subtitle of the book is “Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance.” As any parent can attest, energy management can be a challenge.

The book cites an interesting study, conducted at Baylor College of Medicine, in which a research team spent four years studying 100 “healthy” people over the age of 64. One-third were still working, one-third were retired yet both active physically and mentally, and one-third were retired yet essentially inactive.

After four years, the third group (inactive) scored significantly lower than the first two, not only on IQ tests, but also on blood flow measured to the brain. Dr. Richard Restak, a neurologist, stated, “No matter how old you may be at this moment, it’s never too late to change your brain for the better. The brain gets sharper the more it’s used.”

A client of mine, who turned 70 last year, is doing just that and giving his brain a good workout. He’s taking a Spanish class at Tarrant County College. He’s taking the course for credit, which means he has pop quizzes, exams, and required time in the Spanish lab just like the other students. I jokingly asked if he was the only person in class over the age of 20, to which he proudly replied with a smile: “No, the professor is also over the age of 20.”

A few years ago when Rod Stewart played at Dickies Arena, I invited a

charismatic married couple, who are clients, to attend with my wife Courtney and me. Rod Stewart, jamming on stage like a teenager, was in his 70s. My client, singing along and jamming like a teenager in his seat, dancing in the aisles, was in his 80s! He drove to the concert in his recently purchased new Porsche.

As Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

Well, I don’t know if “70 is the new 50” or “80 is the new 60,” but I do know the more I look around, the more I see folks in their 70s, 80s, and 90s leading a very active lifestyle.

The “retire to the rocking chair” mentality is a thing of the past.

I jog on a treadmill at a rec center about once a week, and given the demographics of the occupants in the room, one could easily think it’s a senior center. A few weeks ago, I’m on the treadmill with a relatively fast pace (5.5), and I notice the guy next to me is cruising along at a pace of 5.7. I was impressed. Why? The gentleman, a retired teacher, was 84 years old.

Everything in life is a tradeoff, and the good news is, we’re living longer and living a very active lifestyle in our later years. The bad news is (from a financial risk perspective), we’re living longer.

When FDR created the Social Security system in 1935, average life expectancy was around age 60. People took Social Security at age 65 (the minimum age to take then; now one can take at age 62), and a few years later passed away. Today, people retire at age 65 and often live to age 95. For several thousand years, the needle on life expectancy moved very little, yet over the last 100 years, because of advances in health and civilization, life expectancy has grown significantly.

Longevity is now one of the most

significant risks faced by retirees.

Longevity and an active lifestyle during “retirement” suggest a few things:

There is a necessity to build a sufficient nest egg.

One needs to be mindful of spending habits (both while working and upon retirement, perhaps especially during retirement).

Assets should be positioned to minimize the risk of longevity (outliving your money). One of my clients captured the concept well during our very first appointment. He looked me in the eye and candidly stated, “John, help us so that our money will outlive us.”

John Loyd, CFP®, MBA, EA is founder of The Wealth Planner™. For over two decades, he has been providing wealth management advice to small business owners and high-income professionals. Contact him at john@thewealthplanner.com. Securities & Advisory Services offered through LPL Financial, a Registered Investment Advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC. All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Data Breach? State Laws Require Notification of Affected Parties

WORDS BY KIALA E. ELLINGSON

Data breaches are becoming increasingly common, especially with the rapid advancement of technology and AI.

According to a 2022 study by Forrester, nearly 75% of surveyed organizations were victims of a data breach. Equally alarming is that in the first nine months of 2023 data breaches increased in the U.S. by nearly 20% compared to the 12 months prior. Because the risk is progressively high, it is important for Texas business owners and executives to be prepared.

A data breach is a security violation in which sensitive, protected, or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen, altered, or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. This situation can result in disastrous consequences, such as lost business revenue, plummeting stock prices, organizational disruption, and damaging personal exposure. Another unpleasant and unexpected consequence can be civil penalties for failure to properly report the breach.

Certain types of data breaches must be reported under Texas’ data breach notification statute, i.e., Section 521.053 of the Texas Business & Commerce Code. Specifically, the statute covers the unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of “sensitive personal information” — such as one’s Social Security number, driver’s license number, credit card number, bank account number, or health information. If such a breach occurs in your business (“business” can include forprofit, nonprofit, and even governmental entities), you must report the breach to any affected parties. Failure to properly report is no trivial matter, possibly resulting in civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation.

Thus, it is critical that you understand what to do (and especially what is required by law) in the event of a data breach.

Knowledge of Texas’ statutory deadlines is key. In general, a Texas business must notify affected individuals within 60 days of a breach. This deadline may be delayed or modified under certain circumstances, as provided in the statute.

Additionally, if the data breach involves at least 250 Texas residents, a Texas business must notify the Attorney General within 30 days of breach. The Attorney General’s website provides specific instructions on how to give notice. Businesses are typically reluctant to self-

report to the Attorney General, but due to the risk of onerous penalties, proper reporting is a high priority.

To ensure compliance with the statute, I would recommend implementing a security policy that tracks the requirements of the statute and addresses how, when, and to whom notice should be given in the event of a data breach.

Such a policy would be especially helpful if you conduct business in multiple states. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories have their own data breach notification statutes, and many of them have different deadlines and other requirements. This means your business may have to comply with multiple state statutes. You can be prepared with a comprehensive security policy that keeps track of important requirements, such as deadlines.

For example, if your business operates in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, your policy must account for the fact that New Mexico has a shorter, 45-day deadline (as opposed to Texas’ 60-day deadline) to notify individuals. A helpful summary of each state’s statutory requirements can be found at https://www.foley.com/insights/ publications/2023/12/state-data-breachnotification-laws.

You’ve heard the saying, “a best defense is a good offense.” Savvy businesses should take this opportunity to be proactive by taking not only prevention measures, such as investing in a good security software and IT services, but also anticipatory measures — that is, having a clear policy and procedure in place when all else fails.

Kiala E. Ellingson is an associate attorney at Decker Jones, P.C., where she focuses on commercial litigation and intellectual property. She joined the firm recently in 2023, bringing with her a strong background in STEM that informs her unique interdisciplinary approach practicing law.

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A&M Law School Dean

Bobby Ahdieh is a fulltime juggler of big ideas.

WORDS BY JOHN HENRY IMAGE BY CRYSTAL WISE

As any good academic, Bobby Ahdieh is always listening and learning.

For example, when he moved his family here five years ago from Atlanta’s Emory University, he was under the impression there were only four geographic indicators.

“Now I know there’s five,” he says laughing. “East, west, north, south, and Texas. It’s its own geographic indicator.”

Especially when your destination is Texas A&M. The Aggies will let you know.

Ahdieh is dean of the Texas A&M Law School in Fort Worth and vice president for Professional Schools & Programs at A&M. He is a member of Fort Worth Inc.’s The 400, the list of those most influential citizens in Fort Worth.

He is certainly one of the more fascinating people who roam among us. He is a dynamo, particularly as it concerns his vocation of advancing human knowledge.

Ahdieh is prestigiously educated, a Princeton man and graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public International Affairs who was later trained in the law at Yale.

He clerked for Judge James R. Browning in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit before a stint in the U.S. Department of Justice.

He has taught at Princeton, as well as

Columbia and Georgetown law schools.

While still in law school, Ahdieh published one of the seminal treatments of the constitutional transformation of post-Soviet revolutionary Russia: Russia's Constitutional Revolution — Legal Consciousness and the Transition to Democracy.

In addition to the book itself, a small stack of Russian newspapers in his office from that time in the early 1990s, which trumpet headlines of history, serve as evidence of another time and place full of the anticipation of hope.

Other favorite items in his office are blueprints of Texas A&M-Fort Worth, the planned Tier 1 campus. Construction

has started with the Law and Education Building.

This was Ahdieh’s brainchild that he brought to civic leaders, who embraced this big, big idea.

The campus will be an intellectual hub of law, engineering, technology, and health sciences. It will drive an influx of innovators and economic development, not to mention invigorate the southeast part of downtown.

“I think the reason it's played out well is because it really was this happy confluence of win on the business side, win on the higher ed side, and win on the civic side,” he says.