Jim Rhodes (born 1958) is an American real estate developer. He founded Rhodes Homes in 1985, and has developed various housing projects in the Las Vegas Valley, including the golf course communities Rhodes Ranch and Tuscany Village. In the 2000s, he was a well known philanthropist in Las Vegas. In 2008, he formed Harmony Homes and began buying distressed properties during the Great Recession. He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009, and turned over most of his residential projects to creditors. Rhodes is considered one of Las Vegas' most controversial developers. Various lawsuits have been filed against him, alleging issues such as fraud, self-dealing, and home defects. In addition, several of his housing projects received opposition from nearby residents. Among the opposed projects is a series of controversial efforts to develop a residential community at Blue Diamond Hill, located west of Las Vegas near Red Rock Canyon. In 2005, he proposed five residential communities in Arizona, mostly near the city of Kingman. The communities would add 131,000 new homes, but residents and government officials were concerned about the amount of water that these projects would require upon completion. The projects never materialized, and Rhodes subsequently used some of the property as farm land beginning in 2013, when he formed Kingman Farms and developed an interest in agriculture. However, locals were still concerned about his use of water for the farming operations. As of 2017, Rhodes had built approximately 11,000 homes in the Las Vegas Valley as developer, and 25,000 to 30,000 homes working as a contractor. For the past 20 years, he had been one of the largest private homebuilders in Las Vegas. Early life Jim Rhodes was born in 1958, to parents Leonard and Betsy Rhodes. He grew up in Las Vegas and attended Clark High School. Leonard Rhodes was a dentist who had friends in real estate. Leonard's friends owned boats and planes, and this instigated Jim's desire for wealth. He later said, "My dream was to buy a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley or something, just to have it. Not that I wanted to drive it — just that I was able to do it." In his youth, Rhodes mowed lawns and also worked at the Las Vegas Country Club, where he washed towels and tennis courts. There, he met various business moguls, furthering his interest in wealth. He spent four years saving money to buy a