Arkansas Visionary: John Flake – Upon This Rock, He Did Build

Photo by Jason Masters

John Flake has built more buildings and managed more real estate than even his prodigious memory can count. And while asking him to name his favorite is akin to singling out a favorite grandchild, a cursory reading of his life’s work draws two immediately to the eye.

The first is arguably the most obvious, the 40-story Capitol Tower now known as Simmons Bank Tower. Christened in 1986, it was then and remains today the tallest building in the state at 546 feet. It bested the previous record holder, Regions Center across the street, by 92 feet.

A second project that speaks of Flake’s ethos happened at about the same time, but with far less fanfare. He spearheaded the community effort to save from foreclosure the historic Daisy Bates home, where the Little Rock Nine would gather before school to talk strategy during the integration of Little Rock Central High in 1957.

Both structures have their own place in Arkansas history. One drove a literal stake into the ground for reimagining and reinvigorating the flagging core of the state’s capital city; the other stands as a living testament to inspire and embolden future civic activists in the name of opportunity and justice for all.

To Flake himself, it’s all part of a clear moral code that has guided his steps through decades as an entrepreneur, a man of faith and a lifelong advocate of his beloved hometown.

“We’ve had several phenomenal projects that we’ve been able to do. I’ve had some really, really terrific people to work with along the way,” he said. “I’ve had some great mentors who have really given me some great advice as well as some business. We’ve been very fortunate to have relationships where people believed in us and let us do our thing.

“I always tried to maintain quality about us. People knew that when they come to a property we own, there’s not going to be trash and dirt on the floors. Throughout my career, I’d preach, ‘Whatever we do, put quality in it.’ The public will see that and embrace it.”

The Flake name is iconic in Arkansas real estate development. His father, Leon Flake, established the family business in 1932 during the Great Depression. The third of four boys, John Flake attended public schools in Little Rock, graduating from Hall High School, all the while his pedigree was pointing him toward real estate as a career.

“I think you’ll see that sons of doctors tend to follow their dad, as do dentists and real estate,” Flake said. “At night, we’d talk real estate around the table when I was seven, eight, nine years old. That’s all I heard about, and after a while you think, maybe that’s what I need to do.

“Dad started out in residential, and he told me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t do that.’ I said, ‘Why is that, Dad?’ He said, ‘Because you’re going to have to show houses on Sunday.’”

John Flake headed to the University of Illinois, where he majored in finance and minored in accounting. He then went to graduate school at Babson College in Boston, where he not only earned an MBA, he solidified his resolve to one day own his own shop.

“Babson is the number-one school in the country for entrepreneurs,” Flake said. “Basically, they teach you how to become an entrepreneur, if you don’t know how. My education, between Illinois and Babson, was phenomenal. I was very prepared to go into business after that.

“I would have to say that when I was working on my MBA, I knew that I could not start out initially on my own, but at that point I felt that I had the skill set to do it at the right opportunity.”

Flake initially learned at the arm of his eldest brother, Dickson, who had returned to Little Rock at their father’s urging, first with the family firm and then as co-founder of Barnes, Quinn, Flake & Anderson Inc. (now Colliers International|Arkansas) in 1971. Dickson, who died in 2020, was responsible for developing some 2 million square feet of real estate in his career, en route to enshrinement in the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame.

The elder Flake’s long client list included projects for J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Systematics (now Fidelity and Windstream), Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield and the Arkansas Department of Human Services, to name a few. It was, in John Flake’s estimation, the perfect learning lab for an aspiring developer.

“Joining my brother was terrific,” he said. “We did some amazing projects together.”

By October of 1979, John Flake was prepared to go out on his own, founding Flake & Company.

“Let me say for the entrepreneur: there is never just a right opportunity,” he said. “When you take the leap, you have to just go with that and have faith in yourself that you can be successful. You also have to understand that regardless of how things are going, the people who work for you have to get paid. You might not get any money, but the people under you and the operation get paid every two weeks.

“When you’re at that step, it’s not just one where there’s a eureka moment and it’s just laid out and it’s all golden. It’s one where you must really want to cross the line and take the risk.”

Flake recalls having a couple of things going for him in his solo venture. First, he had name recognition and the solid reputation it carried from his father and brother. Second, he was operating in his hometown, where he understood the historical, political and commercial lay of the land. And finally, he was young enough to dream audaciously about what was possible and endure the hours and stress that came with it.

“There clearly is a benefit to being from here and then starting your business here,” he said. “You can go borrow money from a bank and the bank already knows you, knows your family, your background. For an entrepreneur to get any money, that’s really important.

“Second thing, because they know you, unless you’ve spent a little time in the penitentiary or something, they’ll have trust in you. And if you’ve got a product, they’ll be glad to purchase your product.”

The gameplan didn’t call for specialization, and in classic bootstrap fashion, Flake & Company knitted together whatever work it could to pay the bills. Among the company’s first projects were medical offices for physicians — 12,000 square feet here, 20,000 square feet there — built on the Baptist Health campus.

“Starting out, we had to be a generalist,” he said. “We always wanted to be in development, but at some point, you have to realize that you have to meet payroll, so you have to develop a property management company and you had to have brokerage transactions to support your development activities.”

Casting a wide business net also proved an essential buttress against shifting economic tides, which easily capsized companies that were light on capital.

“The period there between ῾79 and ῾83 was a real difficult time to get moving,” Flake said. “What got us through the tough years was having a very stable company and having a balance of divisions within our company.

“We found, for instance, property management and asset management basically carried us through the hard times. Development and brokerage occurred when times were good, but when they weren’t, when they were slow, property management, while not glamorous, was the part of the company that always consistently paid the bills.”

Just four years into his venture, Flake would make the gamble of his lifetime, envisioning an unprecedented office tower to redefine the Little Rock skyline and jump-start the crumbling city core in the process. Even today, it is incredible to imagine a 30-something developer, hometown boy or not, walking into any financial institution with the ask Flake had in mind.

But having already done much of the legwork with some of the city’s top corporate tenants, selling them on the idea of relocating to what would be the most prestigious address in Arkansas, he’d sweetened the pot considerably for would-be lenders.

“If that 33-year-old person walked in with nothing, forget it,” he said. “But if that 33-year-old person walked in and said I’ve got the power company as a tenant, I’ve got Merrill Lynch as a tenant, I’ve got this law firm as a tenant, I’ve got this accounting firm, that’s different. We were 55 percent preleased before we ever dropped a spade.”

With that, a certain gleam sparked in his eye, then an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

“You think about that. Our loan started out at $65 million, and that was in 1983,” he said, a chuckle curling around his words. “There is a lot of difference in risk you want to take when you’re 33 and when you’re 75, I’ll tell you that.”

The triumph of the Capitol Tower opened the floodgates for Flake & Company, both in projects and, in the years to come, partners. In time, the company would gain and shed a number of names above the door, its final incarnation being Flake and Kelley. Along the way, the company became a bona-fide cornerstone of Arkansas real estate, completing projects for Baptist Health, Walmart, Dillard’s, Verizon, Acxiom, Entergy, the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas and CARTI. Success was sweet, but not without its price.

“In 2019, I had heart surgery. I’m doing great now, I feel like I’m 40 or 50,” Flake said. “But it really was an epiphany in that you start questioning what stress does to you. I’ve never seen it, but I wonder if anyone’s ever done a study on the life cycle of an entrepreneur versus a person who just works every day and does a great job but doesn’t have that stress and doesn’t have that workload.”

The following year, Flake made what he calls his last career change, leaving the firm he founded and built for 41 years to join the new Flake & Company created by his daughter, Jessica Flake Dearnley, and her business partner, Tyler Wilson. Rumor has it is he draws no paycheck from the venture, which has projects in five states, and he even borrowed a stray conference room for this interview, lacking a proper office. He said the chance to work with his daughter was all the compensation a guy could ask for.

“Jessica is an extremely driven person; she’s very, very bright,” he said. “She holds three master’s degrees. She’s much more prepared, much more educated than I am, and can do a hell of a lot better job than I do. She allows me to hang out here.

“What I’m trying to do now is, 50 percent of my time I try to help her and 50 percent of my time help other organizations. I’ve been very involved in Jericho Way, and this is giving me that time to pay back, working for the homeless or whatever it is. It’s my way of saying thanks for all the years the city supported me.”

Having had only daughters, Flake said he used to worry about the family name being gone and forgotten one day. Nearly a half-century of projects later, he knows that can’t happen. His legacy is sealed into every brick, block and girder, his ethics and character carried forth by the next generation seeking to shape the horizon.

“My view is, and I might be in the minority on this, but I view that what I’ve done is God’s,” he said. “When you are born, you have nothing. When you die, you have nothing. What God is doing is letting us manage these assets while we’re here, and I think He judges us on the basis of how well we’ve done that.

“The work that we did and the times we’ve had, it’s been a great ride, a lot of fun. I’m just thankful to God every day for what he’s given me.”

JOHN FLAKE ON THE PRICE OF SUCCESS

I’ll tell you, I probably did a lousy job of balancing family and work. I missed a lot of things. I remember going one time on vacation, and I literally got there and they’re calling saying, ‘John, you’ve got to come back home because of so-and-so.’ You just melt down and say, ‘Do I ever get any time off? Can anybody make a decision other than me?’ And I don’t know of an entrepreneur that has not had to really fight for that balance between home and office. You’ve just got to get comfortable enough to where you can delegate.

JOHN FLAKE ON EMBRACING CHANGE

If you’re not constantly changing, you’re backing up and you’re getting behind. I’ve seen some really driven companies that started out in real estate and other industries that didn’t accept change, and they ultimately got swallowed up. I think the biggest thing is to embrace change and to reward change. When someone comes up with an idea of a different way to do it, they ought to be rewarded for their ingenuity.

JOHN FLAKE ON ADVERSITY

We’ve had some projects, like anybody, that were difficult and gave us a lot of problems. But rather than sitting there and whining about it, you’ve got to basically roll up your shirt sleeves and go in there and attack it. When that happened to me, I tried to say “This is an opportunity. This is a challenge. This is not a layup, but I’m going to go in and attack it with my full force and get it done.” I think if you’ve got that attitude towards things, you can’t be beat.

JOHN FLAKE ON THE ART OF NEGOTIATION

The reason why we have done as well as we have is I go in looking at a tenant as my partner. Without them being able to make money in their business, they can’t pay me rent. So, I’ve got to figure out a way, particularly in an economy with rising interest rates and rising inflation, how do I get a return? I might say ‘Look, I’ll work with you. I’ll make just enough to pay my bills and I’m not going to make a return on you for a couple years. Let me get you on your feet.’ And we’ve done that many times with tenants.

JOHN FLAKE ON RISK

Don’t be afraid to take a risk. Make sure you manage it, but don’t be afraid to take risks. If you want to go anywhere other than a salary in life, you’re going to have to take a risk. It’s just part of it. Embrace that risk and go for it. Whatever you’re doing, just embrace life and be happy that God has given you the chance to do it.

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