History

T. Dallas Smith, a native of Atlanta and a Graduate of Georgia State University (Bachelor of Business Administration), began practicing commercial real estate in Atlanta in 1983 under the guidance of Thomas W. Tift with Atlanta Air Center Realty. Mr. Tift states that “Dallas was so eager to learn the business that he told me he would work for free just to get into commercial real estate.”

Although from completely different backgrounds, Dallas and Mr. Tift made one hell-of a team! Mr. Tift owned over 80 acres of land, 60,000 sq. ft. of office space, 20,000 sq. ft. of retail space, and 200,000 sq. ft. of industrial space near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Dallas was initially hired as the leasing agent for all of Mr. Tift’s properties. Within a year, he was named Marketing Director; a year later Vice-President of Leasing; and finally President of First Brokerage: a company started by Dallas and Mr. Tift in response to the shift in the commercial real estate market in 1987 from a Landlord’s market to a tenants market. Dallas credits Mr. Tift for all of his past and future success, because “he was the guy that took a chance on me.”

Dallas decided he needed to make a major shift to a much larger firm to learn more about the tenant side of Commercial Real Estate. So he set his sights on Cushman & Wakefield. He was determined to become a broker for them, the largest private commercial real estate brokerage company in the United States at that time.

Dallas pursued the position at C&W for four months, until Bill Bugg the Southern District President told him “based on your prior work with Mr. Tift and your persistence there is no reason you should not become the first African-American to work here,” and with that statement, Dallas was hired. He became the first African-American broker to work for Cushman & Wakefield of Georgia (C&W). According to Dallas, he became “a pioneer by accident, I was just trying to make a good living for my family, not break barriers.”

He worked closely with Mark Christopher to perfect his Tenant-rep. skills. After years of diligence at C&W, he was tapped by John Schlesinger and Sam Holmes to work with them on the Georgia lottery Deal. The 128,000 sq ft deal was later named the “Best leasing Deal of the Year” by Ernst and Young in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

On his first day of work at Cushman & Wakefield, Dallas placed a cold-call to an Atlanta Icon in the construction and real estate industry: Herman J. Russell (H.J.) in an effort to get him as a client. Dallas stated, “I called his office and asked to speak with him, his assistant asked what the call was regarding, and I made my plea. I just knew I would have to keep calling to get through to him, but to my surprise, he called me back 20 minutes later. In fact, when he called me back, I was in the break room and got an overhead intercom page, that I had a phone call, so I asked the receptionist to transfer the call to the break room. When I answered the phone and it was Mr. Russell, I was totally thrown off. The script I’d written to guide me for his call-back was at my desk, so I felt completely unprepared. Without the script, all I had was what was on my heart… that was if I was going to make it in this business, in this town, I needed to know him and have him as a client. He laughed, and then suggested that I meet with Noel Khalil in his organization.” At Noel’s and Dallas’ first meeting, Dallas bumped-into Jerome Russell, Herman’s son, who was working with the property management division at that time. “We introduced ourselves and Jerome asked what I was doing, when I told him I was with Cushman & Wakefield, he said that he was also interested in the commercial real estate business.

So we arranged to meet for lunch once a month to bounce ideas off one-another, which we did for 3 years. In one of our meetings, Jerome told me that he wanted me to come over and start a commercial brokerage division once he became the company’s President. I really didn’t know what to think about it – but it sounded exciting. And true to his word, the day that his appointment was announced in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, he called me while I was reading the article and he simply said “are you ready to go to work?”

That was the beginning of a wonderful tenure for Dallas at H.J Russell & Company. While at H.J. Russell, Dallas regularly worked with Fortune 500 Companies, but his fondest memories are of the times he spent one-on-one with Mr. Russell. “He is certainly one of the wisest men I have ever met, and many of the sage comments are still a part of my repertoire. One of my favorite sayings of his is: “one plus one will always equal two” in other words – keep it simple and don’t let anybody fool you.”

Now as President of T. Dallas Smith & Company, he has taken Mr. Russell’s sayings to heart. He would say “your name is on the marquee now, so make your name mean something by being a man of your word and always put your clients first.” This is the basis of our motto: CLIENS PRIMORIS– CLIENT FIRST