or the past 40 years, Pier 1 Imports has made its home in Fort Worth, Texas. If Chairman and CEO Marvin Girouard has his way, the US$2-billion company will call Fort Worth home for at least the next 40.
In 2004, Pier 1 moved into its new $90-million corporate
headquarters in the downtown central business district. “We could have
gone anywhere, but we chose to stay home in Fort Worth,” Girouard tells
Site Selection. “We could have done this project somewhere else, but we
had a good feeling with the city council of being wanted, and land was
a decent value here compared to places like Atlanta, New York and Los
Angeles.”
In the end, he says, there were just too many reasons
to keep Pier 1 in Fort Worth. Many other executives are making the same
decision when evaluating the Dallas-Forth Worth-Arlington market.
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| The 460,000-sq.-ft. (42,734-sq.-m.) Pier 1 Place in Fort Worth houses the corporate headquarters of Pier 1 Imports, a $2-billion company that has been steadily growing from its Texas base for the past 40 years. Photo courtesy of John Davis, Dallas Visual Design. |
According to the Conway New Plant Database, the DFW
metropolitan area recorded more new and expanded corporate facilities
than any other metro area in the U.S. in 2004. With 277 corporate projects,
DFW topped longtime stalwarts Detroit, which had 263 facility projects,
and Chicago, which had 238.
What does it take to become Site Selection’s Top
Metro? The same qualities that made Texas the Governor’s Cup winner, says
Girouard: “A great quality of life, great public and private schools,
great colleges and universities, and a work force that’s reliable and
affordable.”
Girouard calls these pivotal Site Selection criteria “Texas values,” and they begin with the people.
“I was born and raised in Texas,” says the 1961 Texas
A&M grad. “Pier 1 draws a lot of its labor force from the many suburbs
around Fort Worth. There is a great work ethic here. We are able to attract
people who are very loyal. In fact, all of our top executives have been
here at least 15 years, and most have been here 20 to 25 years or more.”
Girouard is one of them. Since joining the company in the mid-1970s as a buyer, he has helped shape the firm into one of the nation’s largest specialty retailers, offering foreign-made crafts, furniture and tableware.
Today, the company has more than 1,200 stores and nearly 20,000 employees. Almost 1,000 of them work in Fort Worth. Girouard credits both Fort Worth and Texas with elevating the company’s growth.
“There is no state income tax in Texas,” he says. “That’s certainly an appeal to our people. Housing prices have been very positive. And the downtown revitalization that has taken place over the last 10 years, driven by the Bass family, has been a positive experience. This has helped us attract and retain people over the years.”
Girouard likes downtown Fort Worth so much that he decided to buy a piece of it — about 15 acres (6 hectares) for the 460,000-sq.-ft. (42,734-sq.-m.), 20-story headquarters called Pier 1 Place.
“We rented space before I became CEO about six years ago,” Girouard says. “But I wanted to do something that would be our building. We found this piece of property, very close to the Radio Shack headquarters and right on the Trinity River — a premier piece of property in the city. We have a spectacular view on every floor of the building because there’s nothing adjacent to us.”
The city sealed the deal by abating certain taxes, rezoning the property for high-rise construction, and allowing one street to be closed and another expanded.
“The attitude and spirit of the community in Fort
Worth is like no other city I have ever seen,” Girouard says.
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David Berzina, executive vice president of the Fort
Worth Chamber of Commerce, says that thanks to projects like Pier 1 and
Radio Shack, the Fort Worth CBD is 94 percent occupied. “That is unheard
of in a major metro area,” he said. “We are now the 20th largest city
in the country and the fastest growing of that top 20.”
There’s also plenty of room to grow. Fort Worth has more than 320 square miles in the city limits. “The planners of Fort Worth decades ago did a good job of annexing property,” Berzina said. “We do a fair bit of marketing, but a lot of our success is due to word of mouth.”
With 22 percent growth in housing starts from 2002 to 2004, Fort Worth has more people who are employable. “The people move here for the quality of life,” added Berzina. “The companies follow the people.”
Girouard isn’t the only CEO to fall in love with the DFW market. In Dallas, Vought Aircraft CEO Tom Risley last year announced a $598-million manufacturing expansion that will add 3,000 aviation production jobs to the local labor force.
The Vought expansion was the largest transportation
equipment project announcement in the U.S. in 2004. The expansion will
enable Vought to enlarge its scope of work with Alenia and Boeing on the
new 787 Dreamliner airplane and other military aircraft opportunities.
Boeing selected the Vought/Alenia team to build and integrate the 787 airplane’s horizontal stabilizer and the center and aft fuselage, which accounts for 26 percent of the aircraft’s structure.
In February 2004, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced a $35-million commitment by the Texas Enterprise Fund to assist the company’s expansion in Texas. Vought, the largest privately owned aerostructures manufacturing company in the world, plans to bring 3,000 jobs to the Dallas area by 2009.
The Dallas-based Vought has annual sales of $1.2 billion and 6,000 employees in seven U.S. locations.
The second largest manufacturing project to be announced in the DFW market in 2004 was the $160-million expansion of General Motors in Arlington. GM said it plans to upgrade its Arlington assembly plant for future production of the GMC Yukon, Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban and Cadillac Escalade.
There has also been speculation that the Arlington plant will receive a next-generation sport-utility vehicle.
The expansion news came as no surprise, as GM recently announced that the Arlington plant had set the record as the most efficient producer of full-sized SUVs in North America for the third consecutive year, taking only 22.71 hours to assemble a vehicle.
The capital investment will be spent on retooling and renovating the body shop and general assembly areas at the 50-year-old plant. About 27,500 sq. ft. (1,858 sq. m.) of new floor space will be added.
Before this latest announcement, the 250-acre (101-hectare)
site had seen seven expansions since its launch in 1954,
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| RadioShack’s new 38-acre (15-hectare) campus in Fort Worth, on the site of a former housing project, features public gardens outside its three six-story buildings. |
with a cumulative investment of $750 million since 1996. The plant currently
employs about 3,000 workers and builds more than 238,000 vehicles per
year. And in addition to its payroll of $273 million, it paid $10.2 million
in property taxes in 2003.
Mike Rosa, head of economic development for the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, says the turnaround of the DFW economy “started back in the 1990s with interstate trucking reform. Texas also enabled cities and counties to participate in tax abatements around 1990.”
Other beneficial reforms included the in-transit
inventory tax exemption, made available as a local option in the early
1990s.
“That helped Texas’ business climate and its reputation with the Site Selection community,” Rosa says. “Reforms took away the artificial barriers.”
Rosa adds that regional cooperation coalesced in the DFW market several years ago with the launch of a regional branding effort. Leaders of the Dallas and Fort Worth chambers began to work together on large projects — and land them.
One of the best examples of regional cooperation culminated in the huge Countrywide Financial expansion announcement in Richardson and Fort Worth on Dec. 14. Propelled by a $20-million boost from the Texas Enterprise Fund, Countrywide announced plans to bring 7,500 jobs to Texas, including 5,000 in the North Dallas suburb of Richardson.
The project is believed to be the largest single job-creation announcement in the U.S. in the past four years and is a major win for Richardson, a booming Dallas suburb known as the Telecom Corridor.
Discussing the planned $200-million expansion, Countrywide
CEO Angelo Mozilo said, “We operate in all 50 states and believe that
Texas is far and away the best in which to do business.”
Countrywide is buying 500,000 sq. ft. (46,450 sq. m.) of existing space from Prudential Insurance Co. and is purchasing 16.7 acres (6.8 hectares) of land from Nortel for its planned second-phase expansion of an additional 500,000 sq. ft. (46,450 sq. m.).
“By 2008, we hope to increase our market share from about 15 percent to 30 percent and grow from 40,000 to more than 80,000 employees companywide,” Mozilo said.
Bill Sproull, head of the Richardson Economic Development
Partnership, credits strong state leadership with bringing these jobs
to DFW.
“We have a superb regional business climate, but if you had to look at one thing, you would have to look at the Texas Enterprise Fund — our statewide quick-action closing fund — as the key to all of our biggest deals: Countrywide, Vought, Texas Instruments, AutoZone and others.”
But there’s another key too, he says:.
“It doesn’t hurt to have the No. 1 labor market in the USA.”
