“We’re a big-ass city in the middle of two other big cities, and we’re a force to be reckoned with.”
Jim Ross
Mayor
City of Arlington
.…on how his city is attracting businesses and working to create its own skyline, via Dallas Business Journal.
Ross was elected mayor of Arlington in June 2021, and one of his goals for the city is to have something Dallas and Fort Worth are both known for: a signature skyline.
He’s a business owner (of the Mercury Chophouse on the city’s Lamar Boulevard) and the principal attorney of the Jim Ross Law Group since 2008. But after reading Spencer Brewer’s story about him in the Dallas Business Journal, you might add another job to his list: Skyline booster.
“We’re awake, we’re no longer a bedroom community,” Ross tells the DBJ, citing projects in development like the $550 million Loews Arlington Hotel and new Arlington Convention Center.
“Loews Arlington will be done in the first part of 2024, but we’re not stopping there,” Ross adds. “We have plans to have many more beautiful, top-notch hotel rooms. Our new convention center space is over a quarter of a million square feet. It puts us on the map to compete with any convention center space anywhere in the country.”
In addition, Ross says Arlington has plans “to build well over two million square feet of class A office space.”
So what about that skyline?
“There have been missed opportunities,” Ross tells the DBJ. “We’re in the process of rapidly creating a foundation that will hopefully enable us not to squander away any opportunities in the future.”
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