As featured in “The Dallas Morning News”
Trevor Bach, The Dallas Morning News, 28 December, 2025
Kip Sowden, CEO of RREAF Holdings, was recently featured in The Dallas Morning News, where he discussed Dallas’s rapid growth and noted that, unlike many other cities, the market continues to see significant new development to support rising demand and population growth. To read an excerpt from the article, including Kip’s comments, please see below.
An early gift
The interior of Petroskey’s office, on the 26th floor of Downtown Dallas’ Ross Tower office building, hints at an extraordinary American life. On one wall — opposite an impressive collection of Dallas sports memorabilia and above a desk brimming with family photos — there’s a framed picture of a much younger Petroskey on the White House south lawn, in front of a large helicopter, walking alongside Ronald and Nancy Reagan. “Marine One,” Petroskey explained. “There I am carrying the bags.”
Other photos show Petroskey with Reagan in the Oval Office and with the Clintons; in another, from 2001, he’s standing at a podium alongside George W. Bush, in front of a crowd that includes baseball legends Lou Brock, Tommy Lasorda and Al Kaline. “I saw him at the Alfalfa dinner,” Petroskey said, referencing the 43rd president and the exclusive D.C. social club, “and I said, ‘I’ve got an idea for you: Every Hall of Famer to the White House to start the season.’”
Petroskey, 70, with a quick smile and the polished, unflappable air of a distinguished statesman, grew up in Michigan and spent decades in high-profile communications and executive roles. In the mid-1980s he served as a press secretary in Reagan’s White House, and for most of the 2000s he was president of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He’s also held top roles with the National Geographic Society and Texas Rangers.
But in early 2014, when he was appointed to lead the DRC, he had never worked for a chamber of commerce. In his first week on the job his predecessor, James Oberwetter, the former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told him he was leaving him “a little gift,” Petroskey recalled. “He said, ‘Next week, you are going to be in the seat when it’s announced that Toyota is moving here from California.’”
That relocation, which moved the carmaker’s North American headquarters from Southern California to Plano, eventually brought some 4,000 jobs and billions of dollars to North Texas, representing one of the biggest economic boosts in the region’s history.
It also set the tone for the next decade: Since 2014, the year Petroskey took over as head of the chamber, more than 700 companies have announced moves or expansions into Dallas-Fort Worth, and more than 180 have relocated their corporate headquarters, according to the chamber’s count. It’s a list that includes major players from industries that range from tractors (Caterpillar, Kubota) to high fashion (Louis Vuitton). Over the past few years, in particular, North Texas has also emerged as a major finance capital, welcoming three new stock exchanges and boldface names like Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Over the same period D-FW has added over one million jobs, according to chamber figures.
“If you drive around Dallas,” Kip Sowden, CEO of the Uptown-based commercial real estate firm RREAF Holdings, told The News earlier this year, “you’re seeing cranes. You’re not seeing that in a lot of other parts of the country.”
Exactly how much credit the chamber — let alone one executive — deserves for the surge is, of course, up for debate. But long before so many splashy corporate announcements, it was often Petroskey and his team who served as out-of-state executives’ first point of contact, then worked for months behind the scenes to leverage connections and ultimately sell them on North Texas.
