Cliff Booth grew up in Montreal, Canada, speaking French and English and skiing and playing hockey during long winter months. The real estate investor and chairman and CEO of Westmount Realty Capital moved to Dallas in 1979 with his family. He went on to buy 28 properties downtown and build his business, which he named for two peaks surrounded by “The Highland Park of Montreal” in 1984. “It was sort of a tip of the hat to Montreal,” Booth says. Today, the company’s portfolio includes 11 million square feet of industrial properties and 4,000 multifamily units nationwide. Here, Booth shares his story:
“I was third generation in our family antique business that my grandfather started. In 1976, the province of Quebec had an election where the government that came into power pledged to try and separate Quebec from the rest of Canada and become its own country. It didn’t succeed, but it wasn’t good for business. We’re Jewish, and there was a little bit of some uncomfortable undertones there as well. A lot of people left Montreal at that point. We were among them. When I was a young adult, we moved the family business from Montreal to Dallas in 1979. We bought a property on Maple Avenue, across from The Crescent, which we called Booth Galleries. The antique business didn’t do that well, but the real estate, because it was announced that The Crescent would be built across the street, turned out to be a great investment. We sold that property after a while, and that helped me launch into my real estate career.
“I grew up in a walkable city, where downtown was the hub of activities. It was the cultural center where everything flowed through. Dallas was not that way. In the 70s, it was not where you wanted to be. It was a business, daytime place. At night, there was nothing going on. In the 80s and into the 90s, you started to see cities all over the country had come and rejuvenated their downtowns and found value and charm in these old buildings and the infrastructure that led people to downtowns to begin with. It occurred to me that that was going to happen in Dallas, too. Dallas had a really good inventory—great buildings on Main Street and Commerce and Elm Street. We started buying a lot of properties. It was very tough, even though we didn’t pay a lot relatively speaking for these buildings. It took a long time for things to turn around. I’m happy we did it, and downtown Dallas is now fabulous and will only continue to get better.”
Author
