Ross Perot Jr. and his team had no idea that the few hundred acres they purchased decades ago would grow into a 27,000-acre development with thousands of homes, hundreds of companies and millions of square feet of commercial real estate.
The public-private partnership that formed Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport created a unique economic engine for the entire region. But Perot said the railroad deal he made back in the day that eventually led to the BNSF Intermodal Facility was even more impactful at the time. And when you put both rail and air together?
“It’s magic,” he said.
Perot, the chairman of Hillwood, has watched AllianceTexas become one of the state’s hottest spots for business activity. It has generated $142 billion in economic impact since 1990, supporting 602 companies and 73,134 jobs, according to Hillwood’s latest economic impact report. Now, reflecting on the past and looking to the future, Perot still sees the same opportunity in Fort Worth as when he first started investing in the area.
“I tell everybody, if you’re new to town, you move west,” he said. “You go to Fort Worth. It is the greatest opportunity.”
Perot started investing right out of college in 1981, focusing on northern Dallas. He grew up around development. His father, Henry Ross Perot Sr., developed campuses for his company, Electronic Data Systems, first on Forest Lane in North Dallas and then in Plano.
Perot Jr. was also investing in Dallas’ northern suburbs, but when land became too expensive, a broker approached him offering 305 acres of ranch land on the other side of the Metroplex for $5,000 an acre — what he said would have been $50,000 an acre on the east side.
North Fort Worth at the time wasn’t known for growth. The city grew south and southwest because developers were avoiding the Stockyards. Practically everything northwest of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport was empty, Perot noted on a map inside his boardroom office.
More and more brokers approached him with new opportunities to buy north of Fort Worth. Eventually, Federal Aviation Administration officials approached him about what would become the Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport, a public-private partnership between the FAA, Hillwood and the city of Fort Worth. Perot was in the Air Force at the time and flew out of what was then Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth.
The first major deal for the airport was when American Airlines announced a $500 million maintenance base in 1989. The airport was still under construction. When the savings and loan crisis hit, Perot and his business partner, Mike Berry, had to learn to be developers.
“We thought all we would do is sell land to developers, but all of our development clients went broke,” he said. “I mean, literally, we had nobody to sell to, so Mike and I decided, ‘Well, I guess we have to build a warehouse.'”
Millions of square feet later, development is now a large part of Hillwood’s business. But at the time, the phones weren’t ringing. Perot, Berry and Hillwood executive Bill Burton spent their days cold-calling. Clients started showing up such as Nestlé and NASCAR, which led to the Texas Motor Speedway.
Then, a bunch of other companies they never foresaw coming: Facebook/Meta’s data center, Amazon Air’s regional hub and Charles Schwab’s campus on Circle T Ranch. He couldn’t imagine any of it coming to the area — and there’s always an opportunity around the corner.
“We’re still a white sheet of paper, and we are whatever you can dream you can do,” he said. “We want all the great entrepreneurs to show up here with their dream, because you go back to what Mike Berry and I thought when we started. We weren’t very creative. We couldn’t dream of what happened at Alliance Airport. We thought it was going to be an auto factory, an airplane factory.”
Convincing companies to look west isn’t hard, Perot said — he hosts executives at Hillwood’s Circle T Ranch in Westlake. During the interview with Fort Worth Business Journal, he mentioned he was going to the ranch for an event later in the day.
Today, everything from flying taxi companies to supercomputer makers and film producers are locating at Alliance.
In early September, Perot welcomed makers of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft from across the country to a hangar at the airport as the state and federal government launched tests of the new technology. One manufacturer of the aircraft, Joby Aviation Inc. (NYSE: JOBY), revealed it had already leased 45,000 square feet at Alliance Air Trade Center. Perot said he plans to get licensed to fly the aircraft.
Hillwood has embraced television and film creator Taylor Sheridan, who Perot called the “chief marketing officer” of Fort Worth because so many of his shows featuring the city are seen across the globe — he said the president of Pakistan is a fan. Hillwood partnered with Sheridan’s 101 Studios to open the largest film studio in Texas in Alliance at 450,000 square feet and anticipates doubling the space.
“Taylor is a genius,” Perot said. “He’s a once-in-a-lifetime genius that knows how to speak to an audience and create a product that people love.”
Perot believes the deal that brought rare earth magnet maker MP Materials to the area, which he calls a “Manhattan Project,” is one of the most important strategic deals Hillwood has struck as MP attempts to onshore rare earth magnet production.
He also listed Wistron?’s $761 million supercomputer manufacturing sites as a recent important deal.