ABOUT
A native Dallasite, Jim Lake, Jr. graduated from Baylor University in 1981 with a BBA in Real Estate. He began his career that same year as a Commercial Real Estate Broker and then entered the real estate development business at Jim Lake Companies in 1985. After weathering the commercial real estate recession of the late 1980s, he co-founded Jim Lake, Inc. and Jim Lake Partners, LLC to focus on acquiring existing buildings and redeveloping them, building on the company’s experience of creating the Bishop Arts District in North Oak Cliff.
As his acquisitions grew, and the Dallas Design District matured, Jim Lake Companies became a leader in Adaptive Urban Redevelopment with pioneering projects such as Trinity Loft, the first residential and mixed-use project in the Design District; International on Turtle Creek, a 158,000 square foot repurposed parts warehouse into a design center; Jefferson Tower, an entire city block of historic buildings JLC completed in 2015; the Waxahachie Town Square redevelopment; Downtown Ennis and Cedar Hill.
Jim is the former Chairman of the Board of the Stemmons Corridor Business Association, was named one of Dallas’ Top 500 CEOs by D Magazine in 2016, has won the Business of the Year award from the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce, and a Preservation Achievement award for Jefferson Tower in 2017 and The Mayor’s House in 2020. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Oak Cliff Commerce Board of Directors.