Jack Belz
Downtown Memphis wouldn’t be such a lively place without Jack Belz. As chairman and CEO of Belz Enterprises, Belz heads one of the South’s largest real estate and development firms. A longtime booster, activist, and participant in Downtown development, he is best known for bringing back The Peabody, which served as the impetus for the Downtown renaissance which followed. He is the driving force behind Peabody Place, a two-million-square-foot mixed-use development stretching for eight blocks that welcomed ServiceMaster’s headquarters in 2017. Belz worked with the Memphis Housing Authority and Henry Turley Company to develop Uptown, involving construction of about 1,000 new single-family and multifamily units near St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He also partnered in Downtown projects such as Harbor Town and South Bluffs. He’s won many honors, including the Leadership Memphis Community Leadership 2000 Award, the 2003 Master Entrepreneur Award of the Society of Entrepreneurs, the 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center City Commission, and the Kether Shem Tov Award from the Orthodox Union, one of the highest honors bestowed on members of the worldwide Jewish community.
