North Texas Developers Hope to Use Amazon ‘Roadmap’ to Snag Next Big Thing

Karen Robinson-Jacobs Steve Brown
Dallas Morning News

North Texas developers embraced a glass-half-full approach Tuesday after being passed over for Amazon’s highly-prized HQ2, with some saying saying that the Seattle giant’s arrival could have sucked all the oxygen from the room.

“As amazing a company as Amazon is, I am glad we did not win,” said developer Lucy Billingsley, a partner with Billingsley Company. “Amazon’s hunger to hire people will chase away other great corporations. I love the diversity of Dallas-Fort Worth’s businesses and I want every other corporation that is aiming to hire the best employees to come here.”

Missing out on the biggest economic development prize in modern history may be a blessing in disguise, real estate developers said, as the region learns from the rejection and uses the lessons to attract other large corporations.

The Amazon economic development beauty contest began more than a year ago as a free for all, with 238 communities in the U.S. and Canada making a play for a promised $5 billion investment from Amazon and up to 50,000 jobs over the course of 10 years.

In January, that list was whittled down to 20 finalists, and Dallas was said to be in the top five, according to Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings.

At stake was a market-changing project with the power to attract an entire e-commerce ecosystem.

From a pool of nearly 60 sites in 23 cities across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, Amazon narrowed its focus down to three, all near downtown, Rawlings said.

Among them was the site of the old Oak Farms Dairy on Zang Boulevard, offered up by Cienda Partners. In addition to tremendous views of the Dallas skyline, the site is adjacent to the new Oak Cliff streetcar line with at least two DART stops nearby.

“Cienda is really happy to have participated as one of the downtown sites,” said Philip Wise, principal of the firm. “It’s a little disappointing not to be selected, but it’s been a very healthy process for the city.

“Dallas always competes well in the cost of living,” he added. “For those companies … that need to attract talent, Amazon gave us a great roadmap. That roadmap focuses on quality of life factors … and the quality of our education system.

“There are going to be other companies that want to come to Dallas and we now know where to put our resources.  It’s now [up to] us to make the hard decisions to commit the funds in those areas to make us more competitive.”

An Amazon nod would have resulted in at least 5,000 jobs — the level assigned to third-place finisher Nashville. Two East Coast communities, in the New York and Washington D.C. areas, will split the top prize.

The Seattle-based company said Tuesday it will divvy up $5 billion to build second and third headquarters for as many as 25,000 new employees in each city over the next decade and beyond.

Even without an Amazon-sized project, North Texas has seen a flood of new recruits.

Total nonfarm employment in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan statistical area rose by nearly 115,000 between August 2017 and August 2018, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Amazon is a very large project “but there are dozens of others in the works I’m sure,” said Robert Decherd, chairman, president and chief executive of A. H. Belo Corporation, the parent of The Dallas Morning News. The former home of the newspaper, at 508 Young St., was one of the downtown properties on Amazon’s short list.

“Dallas-Fort Worth has benefited in the last five years from similar processes that have resulted in enormous investments by large companies and developers. Those decisions were not made by happenstance,” Decherd added. “That’s why we should feel good about where we are as a city and as an economy.”

Since September 2017, when the HQ2 search was launched, 40 corporations have announced relocations and expansions within the D-FW region, according to the Dallas Regional Chamber. That includes Core-Mark, Louis Vuitton, Paycom, Peloton, Smoothie King, and Vistaprint.

Unlike the smaller newcomers, Amazon would have likely snapped up much of the region’s tech talent. And that caused some of the region’s current employers to fret.

“I’ve met with some companies and they were kind of worried that if Dallas was chosen by Amazon, what will happen to that labor pool?” wondered developer Fehmi Karahan, whose Legacy West project in Plano has attracted marquee employers including the North American headquarters of Toyota.

“Certainly there is pressure in today’s market in the Dallas area to find employees and I hear [of] companies poaching from one another… So I think if you had that kind of a demand in our labor market it could have [an] impact.”

Several developers said even without the win, the exhaustive introspection needed to craft the North Texas bid will yield dividends for Dallas in the future, including pointing out areas such as education in which the region and state could use some improvement.

“We are a more informed community and economic development team for all we have done together, and we’ve learned a lot of about our city’s strengths and opportunities for growth in this process,” said Mike Hoque, who, together with developer KDC, offered up land near downtown included among Amazon’s final three local options.

“This is very good for Dallas and we will … keep building and growing for everyone to benefit.”

— Columnist Cheryl Hall contributed to this report.