Last year, Hillwood's Alliance development had marked its second-largest growth period, creating 3.2 million sf in lease and sales, outdistanced only by the record-breaking 1996 when 3.3 million sf in deals had been inked. Year 2000's tally bolsters findings of an impact study, released yesterday, that predicts another $38.5 billion will follow in the next nine years. The Insight Research study, commissioned by Ross Perot's team, concludes that one in every 14.8 jobs in the Tarrant County-Arlington region is somehow affected by the still-growing AllianceTexas.
It had been a 1.2-million sf JC Penney facility on 100 acres that had catapulted 1996 into a record year. Year 2000 has been marked by a series of large-scale deals, ranging from 300,000 to 400,000, that are responsible for the rosy economic picture. The year's largest deal, yet to be announced, is a 400,000-sf build-to-suit on 21 acres for an existing customer's expansion in Alliance's Westport section, an inside source has told GlobeSt.com.
Eight hundred acres had been sold last year, a sure sign that Insight Research's historical take based on economic cycles is right on target. Elizabeth Morris, Insight's CEO and chief economist, says the past, present and the future calls are "as reasonable and as conservative as we can make them." Key to the forecast is the fact that only 3,800 acres of the 15,000-acre AllianceTexas have been developed. Each new customer brings support business and more connections that can be networked into future deals.
The study includes a planned expansion for FedEx's regional sorting hub, which shows another 572 jobs to come on line by 2009, up from this year's expected 1,289 by year-end. The dollars-and-cents accounting predicts that growth will spawn more than a $105-billion economic impact by 2006 and hold that pace through 2009, the final study year. This year, FedEx's economic impact is predicted to come in at a little more than $74 billion. According to the charts, FedEx will account for the bulk of the growth in the coming years among the existing players.
Morris' team concludes that one in 15 jobs in the region would have never been created without AllianceTexas, a four-municipality development mortared on incentives such as those being offered to Dell Computer. Simultaneous with the report's release at yesterday's council meeting, Ft. Worth elected officials have OK'd a 60-year package for the Round Rock computer manufacturer to develop a 500-acre corporate campus. The deal is independent of Dell's 75,000-sf sales and support center that should open in April in Alliance.
To earn the development incentives, Dell is being required to invest $40 million into the project and hire 1,000 workers by 2008. The package is not mortared in tax abatements, but rather a special taxing district and strategic incentives to recoup property taxes and sales taxes for the next 60 years. Now, it's up to Dell to decide whether the deal is sweet enough to go ahead and push on a land buy that's just five miles south of Alliance Airport and seven miles north of the city's downtown. Dell is an old-hand at driving deals as evidenced at the corporate headquarter site in Round Rock and Nashville, where a two-year-old, 3,000-worker corporate campus now pumps billions into the local economy.
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