Tim Headington

You can’t pigeon-hole Tim Headington. His career ranges from an Academy Award to an oil fortune, with stops in Oklahoma City, North Dakota, Hollywood and Dallas. 

The billionaire executive producer of multiple Oscar winner “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” started his storied career in oil, shifting from a base in Oklahoma City to Dallas in 1984, and later buying and selling a chunk of shale acreage in the Baaken Formation of North Dakota to XTO Energy for nearly $2 billion in 2008. 

You can call him a force in Dallas, however, especially in light of the fact that the big sale came as Headington was making a big bet on downtown Dallas with the redevelopment of The Joule Hotel. Headington converted the vacant, 1920s-era bank building at 1530 Main Street into a boutique hotel. The project, which opened in 2008, became a symbol of downtown’s revitalization through adaptive reuse and made Headington into a prominent advocate of the city’s struggling urban core. 

Headington’s vision for the city’s center has come full circle, with downtown once again seen as a laggard compared with Uptown and the bustling Knox-Henderson district. Whether Headington assumes the advocate’s mantle once again remains to be seen, but he’s got a front-row seat on the challenges from Headington Resources Inc.’s headquarters on Main Street, just a block away from the Joule.

— Jess Hardin