"If we were simply a real estate developer that was focused just on the box, the building, I don't think that would get us far in the current economic climate," Hillwood senior vice president Bill Burton tells GlobeSt.com. "There are a lot of good developer and good buildings out there right now. But we spend almost as much time working on issues like labor, productivity and efficiency at moving products as we do on development. That really makes the difference in getting tenants to sign."

According to Burton, the Fort Worth-based developer has signed one million square foot of leases at Alliance since January. Several were renewals or expansion by existing tenants, but Alliance Brokers Inc. signed a new lease for 292,500 square feet of logistics space in Alliance Westport 20 and Q-Edge signed for 365,440 square feet of manufacturing and distribution space in Alliance Gateway 2. Alliance Brokers, an affiliate of Dallas-based Trans-Trade Inc., is a logistics company specializing in transporting heavy-load containers. Q-Edge, a subsidiary of Taiwan's FoxConn Electronics, is an electronics assembler and distributor.

Burton lists at least a half dozen services and amenities provided at the 17,000-acre development, which has 29 million square feet spread among 50 buildings. The most obvious is the presence of a BNSF Intermodal facility capable of handling 600,000 containers and trailers per year. The exec says the facility saves logistics and distribution tenants a significant amount of money by reducing the cost of transporting goods between trains and the distribution buildings.