On Thursday evening, 1,400 real estate professionals will gather at the Hilton Anatole for The Real Estate Council’s legendary FightNight. As TREC prepares to commemorate the event’s 30th anniversary, it has also re-examined its philanthropic endeavors so that the proceeds from FightNight can have the highest impact on Dallas.
The Real Estate Council was born shortly after the first FightNight in 1989 with the “intention of working with the city, particularly around issues that impacted development,” TREC president and CEO Linda McMahon says. The inaugural event, put on by industry heavyweights like Jeff Swope, Bob Kaminski, Neal Sleeper, Steve Crosson, Jesse Pruit, and Steve Means, included a fully sanctioned boxing match, as it still does today. Over the last three decades, FightNight has refined its entertainment, dining, drinks, and décor to become the lavish charity event real estate execs know it as today.
Though the organization is still heavily involved in policy issues relating to real estate, TREC’s FightNight has raised more than $26 million to advance community development in Dallas. That money is funneled through The Real Estate Council Foundation and awarded to community projects conjointly with volunteer and pro-bono services from TREC members. “Our grants were between $25,000 and $75,000—and that does a lot, but along with our pro-bono services, we’ve given millions,” McMahon says. And those smaller grants were having an impact, but in 2017, TREC asked itself, “Are we an inch thick and a mile wide?,” TREC Young Guns chairman (and Cushman & Wakefield director) David Eseke says. “Rather than small increments of change, TREC thinks bigger than that.”
Thus, TREC pursued a new strategy for giving. “Last year, we felt like we were losing our ability to have a lot of impact,” McMahon says. “We decided we’d invest all of our proceeds in one neighborhood. … We chose the Forest Revitalization District.”
First announced last fall, TREC pledged pro-bono services and more than $1 million in grants to transform what it calls the Forest Revitalization District in partnership with on-the-ground groups St. Philip’s School and Community Center, Cornerstone Baptist Church, and CitySquare. The three-year commitment is underway with a memo of understanding circulating amongst all parties. Likely the first project within the revitalization also known as the inaugural Dallas Catalyst Project will be TREC’s Young Guns initiative to renovate a laundromat in the district. TREC’s junior members, called Young Guns, raised a record amount at another charity event called Casino Night, and will use the proceeds to rebuild the laundromat.
“We’re going to make it into a functioning and modern laundromat,” Eseke says. “There are kids around there who don’t go to school because they don’t have clean clothes. They don’t have that amenity to them, which is a heartbreaking reason not to go to school.” Cornerstone will operate the facility, after the remodel is completed this summer, where anyone in the community can do a load of laundry for one quarter.
In addition to the laundromat, the Dallas Catalyst Project includes the renovation of the iconic Forest Theater, renovation of an adjacent 12,000-square-foot retail space, and exterior improvements to the church in an attempt to create community space using the overpass of Interstate 45.
The Catalyst Project, McMahon say, combines all the things TREC as a real estate organization by “organizing with community members to let them advocate for what they want in their neighborhood.” Says McMahon: “We’re not just funding projects, but really creating catalytic change.”
“We want to be able to have what we’re doing be really tangible and relevant and specific,” TREC chairman (and Cushman & Wakefield managing principal) Ran Holman says. “We came to the notion that we wanted to focus specific money and time on a certain geography so that our efforts will spawn greater investment—that’s why the term catalyst became relevant.”
As for FightNight, chairman of the event (and CBRE Senior managing director) Chris Hipps says the various involved committees have already reached their fundraising goal of $1.4 million.
“When you get people united around a purpose—something bigger than elevating their own career—there’s a lot of shared satisfaction,” Holman says. “That’s the beauty of TREC. It’s not a networking group where people are looking to advance themselves, but looking to get shoulder to shoulder and build things together.”
And it sure helps when it involves a white-tie event with drinks, fine dining, gambling, andLas Vegas-inspired entertainment.
