THE EARLY YEARS
In 1964, after a successful sales career with IBM and as an acquiring agent for Trammell Crow, Jim Lake, Sr. combined his entrepreneurial spirit and business background to form Jim Lake Companies. With a mission to develop industrial buildings in key DFW areas, Jim Lake, Sr. built his first speculative office/warehouse building at 521 J Place in Plano, Texas, which we still own today.
In the 1970s, Jim Lake Companies expanded its development base by adding speculative projects in Brownsville and office, retail, and apartments in Austin and San Antonio. However, after the real estate slump of the early 1970s, JLC chose to focus on a narrow market in Dallas’s old Trinity Industrial District, now known as the Dallas Design District.