Dallas City Wire

Hotelier Monty Bennett has been a supportive friend to the TR Hoover Community Development Center and the south Dallas community, according to TR Hoover Executive Director Sherri Mixon.

The center seeks to strengthen, empower and provide holistic, collaborative services that impact the south Dallas community through affordable housing, economic, and community development, Mixon said.

Bennett has been a stalwart ally for a decade, she said.

Monty Bennett - CEO Ashford Inc. | Photo provided

He is the chairman of Ashford Inc., a management firm, Ashford Hospitality Trust, real estate investment trust (REIT) that controls more than 100 hotels in the United States, Braemar Hotels & Resorts Inc., a REIT focused on investing in luxury hotels and resorts in the Caribbean.

Bennett, whose office is in Dallas, has a ranch in East Texas and has made the state his home base. Mixon said he has consistently shown he cares about the south Dallas community and wants to support TR Hoover.

“Communities and nonprofits like TRHCDC that have fallen victim to benign neglect and have lacked support for so long,” she told Dallas City Wire. “After hearing about our story and programs, Monty reached out to our organization to offer his assistance, and has continued to support us for over 10 years in ways that have enabled us to prosper. He appreciates all that we do and the endless work that we have committed, and has allowed us to offer our youth exposure to the world outside of their community. Over the past 10 years, our summer camps have served about 16,000 children.”

Bennett told Dallas City Wire that it was an easy decision to support the community center.

“Sherri Mixon, the leader of TR Hoover, is an incredible woman with a huge heart,” he said. “You can see the devotion she has for the betterment of those kids. It's impossible to not want to help someone like her and what she's done for her community."

The center supports and addresses subjects such as poverty, economic divestment, blight, infrastructure decline, neighborhood safety and the rising levels of unemployment.

“In the late '80s, we began as a grassroots neighborhood association that later became recognized as the ideal neighborhood association, composed of low-income families seeking to reverse the negative trends developing within their community,” Mixon said. “In 1997, a small group from the association went on to form T.R. Hoover Community Development Corp. [TRHCDC], and received its 501[c][3] and began identifying and addressing the issues of economic divestment, blight, infrastructure decline, neighborhood safety and the rising levels of unemployment within the south Dallas community. The TRHCDC began work with its residents to help shape the life of its community.”

It hasn’t been easy, she said, but the center and its staff have proven they can make a difference.

“Through hard work and great support from its residents, the results led to the construction of the TRHCDC Multipurpose Center, the building of 55 new single infill homes,” Mixon said. “Currently, TR Hoover CDC serves children, adults, and seniors in the south Dallas area through programs like after-school and summer care, seniors helping seniors, referral services for those in need of housing and food, licensed counseling, donation giveaway tables, ESL training and seasonal programs.”

The center was founded in 1997 and named for Mixon’s great-grandfather, TR Hoover. He moved to Dallas in the 1800s and quickly became heavily involved in the community.

Serving and caring for people runs deep in the family’s veins, as Mixon has shown, but she said it takes the assistance of people such as Bennett to keep the center operating.

It’s not the only beneficiary of his community support. Bennett and his companies assist several charitable groups, including The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, Metrocrest Services, the S.M. Wright Foundation and the Special Olympics.

Mixon said Bennett doesn’t care about people’s politics or personal views. He just wants to help.

“Monty exemplifies what it means to support those who need it, unconditionally, despite being Republican or a Democrat. He has walked with us, no matter of our political beliefs or the color of our skin,” she said. “Monty is not one to talk about ideals but one who showcases what it means to act in accordance to one’s heart. Individuals like Monty stand to be the personification of what true support means.”

For more information, or to help TR Hoover Center, go to TRHoovercdc.org.