Who is Valley View Owner Beck Ventures?

The Dallas Mavericks’ move to Valley View in North Dallas signals a fresh start for the Las Vegas Sands-owned NBA team, but, for local developer Beck Ventures, the decision just adds another chapter to a book it started writing in 2012.

It’s been well over a decade since Beck Ventures presented ambitious plans for the aging mall and secured $36 million in public tax incentives. All that’s come from it are lawsuits, code violations and a mysterious fire. The Mavericks’ proposed move brings visions of an arena-anchored entertainment district on the cusp of Preston Hollow, but there are hurdles to clear with Dallas-based CRE firm Beck.

Miami native Jeff Beck, the firm’s founder, cut his teeth in real estate working for Trammell Crow in the 1970s before launching his own firm, Beck Ventures. It’s now the largest landlord at the Valley View Mall site, the future home of the Mavericks at the intersection of Interstate 635 and Preston Road.

The team has a deal with Seritage Growth Properties, a Sears spinoff, to purchase 104 acres of the 110 acre site, but it will also need a similar deal with Beck Ventures, D Magazine reported.

The Beck patriarch made a name for himself as a developer when he bought the remaining portion of raw land that made up the master-planned community Trophy Club northeast of Fort Worth. Looking to take a bigger development swing, Jeff, alongside sons Scott and Jarrod, purchased Valley View Center, then a 40-year-old shopping mall, in 2012.

Real estate wasn’t the only family business; Jeff Beck is also the founder of United Texas Bank, of which Scott is now CEO. The family holding company also owns an energy investment firm and a power brokerage.

Scott Beck worked at JP Morgan before joining the family firm and taking the reins as CEO of Beck Ventures. He was at the helm when the firm announced plans for a sweeping $2 billion redevelopment of the site, known as Dallas Midtown. Nearly 15 years later, very little progress has been made.

The city of Dallas created a tax increment financing district to help fund the redevelopment project in 2014. The city agreed to provide $36 million in tax incentives but pulled the deal when Beck didn’t start demolition by the agreed-upon date, despite hosting a groundbreaking ceremony back in 2016. Beck said the city took too long to approve zoning changes and called municipal leaders “obstructionist.”

Yet, the following year, Beck sued fellow Valley View landlords Hillwood and EF Properties for starting demolition work on their portion of the property. The city sued Beck in 2018 for code violations. Even after they settled the lawsuit, the city attorney opened an investigation into the project in 2022 after police responded to 56 calls to the property that year. The site caught fire three times in the spring of 2023, the first of which prompted the city fire department to declare the site a Habitual Criminal Property.

The rancor between the developer and the city was embodied in the yearslong feud between Scott Beck and District 11 Council member Lee Kleinman that finally ended in 2021 when Kleinman left office and was replaced by Councilmember Jaynie Schultz. Though she told D Magazine in 2022 that her approach is different from her “adversarial” predecessor, in the same breath, she said the Becks are “simply land flippers. They are not developers.”

Schultz left office last year, to be replaced by Councilmember William Roth. Beck and the city agreed to let bygones be bygones in 2023, at least according to Scott Beck, who said at the time that the parties “turned over a new leaf.”

That’s also when demolition of the old mall was finally completed, about 7 years later than initially planned.

Dallas voters agreed to earmark $20 million for the district two years ago. With the money, the city will acquire park land. It’s not clear what will happen with the TIF, since funds are contingent upon affordable housing development, and Beck said he would only put market rate apartments at the site.

Beck seemed to give up on the project early last year, when the firm and other Valley View landlords (including Seritage Growth Properties and Life Time Inc.) offered the land up for sale.

A few months later, Beck Ventures partnered with Anthem Development (where Scott Beck is a partner) to develop Premier at Midtown, a six-story multifamily project with 296 units. The company hosted a groundbreaking for an $85 million project intended to breathe new life into the project in November, but it’s not the first ceremonial shovel that’s hit the dirt at Valley View.