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Texas EDC Deals Play by Monopoly Rules

DALLAS-It's a high-stakes poker game when it comes to economic development. It used to be location, location, location. Today, it's incentive, incentive, incentive, says a well-known Texas EDC instructor.

By Connie Gore | Updated on November 26, 2001

DALLAS-The Texas-style, business-friendly “Let’s Make a Deal” keeps the money flowing in a high-stakes poker game boosted by economic development incentives, central US location and “right to work” power. The well-rounded packaging accounted for the nation’s largest carrot ever dangled — a $1-billion, 90-year incentive for the now-defunct Supercollider project.

Only $600,000 in incentives were tapped before the fusion project shut down, Bill Shelton, managing director of Ft. Worth-based Cornerstone Group, tells GlobeSt.com. Shelton also is an instructor at Texas A&M’s Real Estate Center. He’s also planning to roll the deals into a book on incentive practices across the US.

“It used to be location, location, location. It’s incentive, incentive, incentive today,” Shelton says. But, he stresses, it often takes more than incentive to lure corporate chiefs to the Lone Star state. “It’s not the driving force in many cases,” he says, citing the region’s centralized positioning and union option as being equally important when the cards are laid on the table.

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