Scott Nishimura snishimura@bizpress.net Walmart plans to build a 182,000-square-foot Supercenter in far North Fort Worth and is seeking an incentive agreement, the city disclosed in a report to the City Council Friday. The store would be at the future southeast corner of the Golden Triangle and Park Vista boulevards, and would include a 20,000-square-foot pad site, the report said. The city staff is proposing a 20-year economic development agreement, under which Walmart would build the store and pad site by June 30, 2016. Walmart would make a “good faith effort” to spend at least 25 percent of construction costs with Fort Worth minority or women-owned businesses. It also “commits to employ a minimum of 50 employees during the term of the agreement,” the report said.
The city, in return, would make annual “Chapter 380” economic development program grants – such grants are authorized by state law – to Walmart of 75 percent of the city’s 1-cent sale tax gain and incremental real estate property tax gain that are attributed to the new center. The total grant payments would be capped at $12 million, the report said. Walmart would also agree to fund and build four lanes of Park Vista Boulevard from Ray White Road to Keller Hicks Road. The city would have the right to terminate the agreement if Walmart fails to invest at least $13 million by the 2016 date and an additional $3 million by June 30, 2019; doesn’t complete the project; or doesn’t build the road. The City Council is tentatively scheduled to vote on the economic development agreement March 4. A second agreement for the road project will go before the council “as soon as possible,” the staff report said. Chapter 380 agreements are one of several tools in the city’s economic development incentives offerings, and city officials call them “a gap financing tool of last resort.”
“The purpose of these local grants is to reimburse private developers for the range of expenses that may contribute to a financing gap yielding projects financially infeasible,” the city says on its web site. The city staff is also expected to brief the council Tuesday of a proposed economic development agreement with the Clearfork Development Co. regarding the Clearfork mixed-use development underway along the Trinity River on the city’s west side, according to an item on the pre-council agenda published Friday.