Bob Bolen is smiling down on us undoubtedly.
Officials with AllianceTexas released a report this week building on data suggesting that Hillwood’s 27,000-acre master-planned, mixed-use community in north Fort Worth continues to be one of the state’s most formidable economic engines, just as the late former Fort Worth mayor predicted when he went to bat for a legacy pet project in the late 1980s.
The numbers, however, might have even surprised him.
According to Insight Research Corp.’s annual economic impact report, AllianceTexas has generated roughly $111.5 billion in regional economic impact, including more than $3.4 billion in total taxes paid to local public entities during the past three decades.
More than $10.88 billion of the development’s economic impact was generated in 2022 alone.
“AllianceTexas is an absolute powerhouse in Fort Worth,” said Mayor Mattie Parker in a statement. “By every metric — job creation, economic impact, property tax contribution, opportunities for innovation and more — AllianceTexas proves itself year after year to be incredibly impactful not only locally, but also across the region, state and country.”
The report showed that the development was responsible for more than $684 million in property taxes paid to the city of Fort Worth since 1990. In 2022, AllianceTexas paid $61.1 million in direct property taxes to the city. Conversely, the city has made investments totaling $133.6 million since 1990.
Property taxes paid to Tarrant County total more than $626 million.
AllianceTexas is home to 562 companies, with more than 55 million square feet of office, retail, and industrial space built since 1989.
Widely considered one of the country’s most successful public-private partnership endeavors, total investment at AllianceTexas surpassed $14.2 billion in 2022, with $13.1 billion coming from the private sector.
Public investment totaling $1.08 billion has been invested in the project to date, representing a 12-to-1 private-to-public-dollar investment multiple.
AllianceTexas encompasses nine municipalities, five independent school districts, and two counties. Since 1990, more than $3.4 billion has been paid in property taxes cumulatively to the cities of Fort Worth, Haslet, Roanoke, Northlake, Westlake and Corral City; Tarrant and Denton counties; and Northwest, Keller, and Argyle independent school districts.
The city of Denton, Denton ISD, the city of Justin and the city of Argyle were not included in the 2022 report, as development is still forthcoming). In 2022 alone, the project contributed nearly $380.3 million in property taxes to these local entities.
“AllianceTexas is primarily a private sector-led economic engine, but what excites us most about the report is the exponential return on public investment evidenced by taxes paid and jobs created now occurring on an annual basis,” said Mike Berry, president of Hillwood. “These are numbers nobody could have ever imagined in 1989.”
The year 2022 was a watershed year.
MP Materials Corp. selected AllianceTexas to construct a first-of-its-kind U.S. factory focused on rare earth metal, alloy and magnet manufacturing. MP Materials is the largest producer of rare earth materials in the Western Hemisphere, and the new manufacturing facility, which encompasses 200,000 square feet, is a substantial component of a $700 million investment the company will make over the next two years to fully restore the U.S. rare earth magnetics supply chain.
The project, which broke ground in June 2022, will create 150 high-skill manufacturing jobs and 1,300 indirect jobs and is slated to begin production operations in 2023.
Hillwood also leased its largest industrial speculative building to date to Target Corp. in May 2022 at Alliance Center East 1. The 1,240,584-square-foot facility lease was ranked the largest industrial lease in the Dallas-Fort Worth market in 2022, according to CoStar.
Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. opened its newest Gulfstream Customer Support service center at Fort Worth Alliance Airport in October 2022. Gulfstream invested more than $55 million in the 162,000-square-foot maintenance, repair, and overhaul facility at Alliance. The building includes hangar space, back shops, support areas and employee and customer offices and can accommodate up to nine Gulfstream G650ER aircraft in the hangar space as well as six aircraft on the ramp.
Hillwood finished 2022 with the unveiling of a new fixed-based operation facility at Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport. The new state-of-the-art FBO was designed by Corgan Architects and Amaze Design and encompasses more than 20,000 square feet of offices, lounges and meeting facilities, along with an additional 68,000 square feet of attached hangar space.
“Our success at Hillwood over the years in developing AllianceTexas as a major job center and economic engine for North Texas is a result of a unique spirit of partnership that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the United States,” said Berry.
The full report is here.