Former CEO of Trammell Crow chides Dallas’ elite for not doing more to help poor

[spookyturtle 9,465]

n a wide-ranging — and sometimes discomforting — speech at the Dallas Country Club, esteemed developer J. McDonald Williams sharply criticized the way the city’s rich and powerful have treated Dallas’ southern half.

“America is the land of opportunity, right?” said Williams, the former head of Trammell Crow Co.

“It’s not the land of opportunity and equality for all,” he said. “And I believe that is a threat to all of us.”

Williams’ speech, delivered Thursday morning at one of the city’s most exclusive country clubs to an audience of prominent developers, appeared to resonate, if only because it came from someone who rose to the pinnacle of the business elite.

The late Trammell Crow founded his real estate company in Dallas in the 1940s. It grew into one of the largest development companies in the world. Williams was its chairman from 1994 to 2002. He was president and CEO from 1990 to 1994.

In recent decades, he said, the disparity in wealth between the poorest and richest has grown at a fast and dangerous pace. As a result, “we have now in America the greatest concentration of wealth we’ve had since 1928,” he said. “That’s just the reality.”

In Dallas, as elsewhere, the opportunity to raise oneself out of poverty is becoming more elusive, he said. The rising tide isn’t lifting all boats; it’s lifting yachts, Williams told his audience.

And despite what he called the myths passed around “at the bar of the Dallas Country Club,” the poor are not simply their own victims.

“The class you are born in, that’s probably where you are going to be,” he said. “The American dream is fading for so many of our fellow citizens in Dallas.”

Williams was addressing a meeting of NAIOP, a group that includes many of the city’s top developers. The organization used to be the National Association for Industrial and Office Parks, but in 2009 it dropped the words behind its acronym, saying that the narrow description no longer reflected its membership of leading commercial developers and real estate investors.

Williams told his peers: “The question for us in the real estate community is what kind of city do we want in Dallas?”

Dallas, he said, can be like Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India’s most populous city, where hopeless slums proliferate. Or it can be like Portland, Ore., where a sense of balance prevails.

“It’s a choice. It’s up to you. Y’all are going to create the kind of city we have,” he said.

Williams has worked for years to improve public education and bring development to the southern half of Dallas. In the mid-1990s, he created the Foundation for Community Empowerment to support and assist people and organizations working for better conditions in the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

He acknowledged that his efforts, and those of other wealthy, white business leaders, are often met with suspicion south of the Trinity River.

“You learn that people who look like most of us in this room aren’t trusted, and for good reason, historically,” he said.

The city is changing, he noted. Its minority populations are growing. But Dallas’ schools aren’t serving them well. And there simply aren’t enough economic opportunities.

“We spend money on the Arts District,” he said. “We spend money on … the Calatrava bridges. We spend money on a two-city-block downtown park.

“Those are all good things, but the truth is, we live in a world of limited resources. We are going to have to have a public conversation about how resources get prioritized.”

The city’s elite ignore the changes taking place at their peril, he said.

“You can’t isolate yourself out here in Highland Park for very long,” Williams said.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/park-cities/headlines/20130328-former-ceo-of-trammell-crow-chides-dallas-elite-for-not-doing-more-to-help-poor.ece

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Build more slums in Oak Cliff.

Trammel Crow tore down a huge low income area of housing on the north end of downtown to put up it Crescent office towers. Give me a break today. The company was largely responsible for demanding the Woodall Rodgers extension of Hwy 75 which sliced through another area of homes to provide easy access to Trammel Crow office towers on San Jacinto and Pearl Streets of the CBD. Trammel Crow did more to eliminate affordable housing near downtown than any other single company on earth.

This guy is more mouth and no action than Obama!