Nearly 30 years ago, Hillwood’s industrial airport broke ground in Fort Worth, transforming the economy of North Texas forever.
When construction for what is now Fort Worth Alliance Airport began in July 1988 – it opened in December 1989 ¬– the projected numbers looked too good to be true. Just ask the opponents of the project.
What a difference three decades makes.
Now they seem understated.
Now, Fort Worth Alliance, the world’s first industrial airport, is surrounded by AllianceTexas, a 26,000-acre master-planned community developed and managed by Hillwood Properties, a division of Hillwood.
AllianceTexas is responsible for development in over 30 communities in North Texas encompassing almost 8,000 homes with 6,000 lots under development. That’s 48,880 jobs, an economic impact of more than $64 billion, according to Hillwood’s latest economic report to the city.
Vernell Sturns, a former Dallas Fort Worth International Airport CEO, has been in a good position to watch Alliance evolve over the past three decades, and he says the airport and surrounding development has transformed North Texas.
“What started out as an industrial airport on a barren patch of land in North Texas has created an economic boom,” Sturns said.
This was the first development project for Ross Perot Jr., who built and owns Hillwood. Perot said the past three decades have been an exciting time from his standpoint.
“Growth across North Texas has changed our competitive landscape and positioned us nationally as a premier business destination, while also allowing us to mature into a residential community,” he said. “During the past three decades, we’ve seen our industrial airport evolve into one of the world’s first inland ports and become recognized as one of the nation’s most successful public-private partnerships.
“In tandem, we’ve leveraged opportunities as they’ve come along, which enabled us to develop into a global corporate campus and data center destination, as well as a regional hub for residential and retail growth.”
Perot said the growth of AllianceTexas has allowed Hillwood to greatly expand its portfolio. Today, the company is a global developer with projects across the United States and Europe.
“While we celebrate AllianceTexas’ past successes, we look forward to the future, with AllianceTexas only 50 percent developed and leading brands like Charles Schwab, Facebook and Amazon (and others) expanding their presence,” Perot said.
Aside from being controversial, the deal between the city of Fort Worth and Hillwood was massive.
Hillwood contributed 423 acres for the airport; the city agreed to annex the airport site and Perot property and contribute $25.9 million for initial infrastructure; and the Federal Aviation Administration put in $55 million to build the airport. Hillwood operates the airport for the city, which owns it.
Today, Alliance has turned into a major inland port and logistics center, offering extensive air, rail and truck facilities to tenants ranging from FedEx to Facebook to Amazon to Walmart.
FRONT-ROW SEATS
Bill Meadows, a longtime area business and political leader, was a member of the Fort Worth City Council when Alliance was just beginning.
He, too, had a front-row seat to the job creation, revenue generation and enhanced tax base made possible by Alliance.
“Alliance is an integral and important part of what Fort Worth is today,” Meadows said. “The value out there is several billions of dollars in just decades, such a short period of time. … It is one of Fort Worth’s most impactful projects.”
However, Meadows added, Alliance was not without some controversy.
“Leaders like Bob Bolen, who was mayor, on to Kay Granger were criticized in certain circles by Fort Worth citizens who didn’t realize what the true vision of Alliance was,” Meadows said. “I would go to community meetings and people would be raising serious questions.”
Little wonder. There was nothing like it.
“The Alliance story is a story about the spirit of Texas and how Texas does business,” said Mike Berry, president of Hillwood Properties and Hillwood Urban. “This involved a whole team of people in the public and private sector. There was a lot of ‘can do’ attitude. I think it is indicative of why we and the entire state continue to be successful.”
Paul K. Harral, now associate editor of the Fort Worth Business Press, was an assistant managing editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram supervising coverage in Arlington and Northeast Tarrant County when the first reports about the potential of the Alliance project began to surface.
“Frankly, I couldn’t believe what we were hearing,” Harral said. “And we decided to do a special project, actually looking to knock down the hype. But when we began to do the actual reporting, it quickly became evident that the potential for the reliever airport and the land surrounding it was staggering.”
THE SKEPTICS
But Harral’s newspaper did not jump on board about the project, particularly with regard to annexation and tax incentives. Richard L. Connor, now owner of the Fort Worth Business Press, was publisher of the Star-Telegram in those days.
“On our editorial page and in columns we expressed serious doubts about the project. We thought the city and city council were giving too much away,” he recalled. “Those were the Mayor Bob Bolen days and let’s just say he never lacked for enthusiasm about new business development despite the costs to the city.”
“I am more than happy to say that we were not only wrong, but dead wrong,” said Connor. “It was a brilliant idea and it has added greatly not only to Fort Worth but also to all of North Texas.”
Alliance’s recent additions include new services for Hillwood airways, two new aircraft hangars and a runway extension project to increase air cargo capacity.
The AllianceTexas development, located in Tarrant and Denton counties, spans parts of Haslet, Fort Worth, Westlake and Roanoke.
It includes the Alliance Global Logistics Hub, the nation’s largest inland port, with proximity to rail and Intermodal service via BNSF Railway and direct access to highway frontage on Interstate 35W.
The Alliance venture is described as one of the nation’s most successful public-private partnerships.
RAILROAD AND RACETRACK
Many area officials looked on in wonder as the Alliance project started to flourish.
Doug Harman, for instance, was Fort Worth city manager from 1985 to 1990 and head of the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau for 16 years. He said the success of Alliance made so many other North Texas highlights possible.
“Without Alliance, for instance, there would never have been a Texas Motor Speedway,” Harman said. “So many things are interconnected. And the Alliance Airport was the beginning of so many different things.”
BNSF Railway was a key to the success of the Alliance project.
“With the opening of our intermodal facility at Alliance in 1994, we pioneered the logistics park concept, which uses an intermodal hub to anchor distribution centers,” said Brant Ring, BNSF vice president of business unit operations. “Our Alliance Logistics Park development has become an important economic and job growth engine in the D-FW market.”
Alliance is notable for being an intermodal distribution point – “intermodal” involving two or more different modes of transportation when conveying goods. And, Harman said, local officials were only beginning to learn about and understand the concept at the time.
“If you have the opportunity to survey the landscape there, you will start to see the rail connections,” Harman said. “Literally, the entire universe of economic development is unfolding before your eyes. Alliance really has changed the look and economic function of the entire area.”
A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW
Hillwood officials recently invited Fort Worth Business Press representatives to their corporate offices in Fort Worth for an interview and photography session. It was a tip of the hat to the Business Press and to the fact that both entities are rapidly approaching their third decade.
The session concluded with a helicopter fly-over to provide a visual account of the company’s progress and expansion over the years.
During that meeting, Berry discussed how Hillwood was able to keep up with changes in developing businesses and developing technology.
“We had a little bit of a front-row seat,” Berry said. “We got to work with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad when intermodalism was just being developed. We were right there, learning how to speed up the processing of those containers. We learned how you shorten the supply chain. With our front-row seat, we were able to see a great many things first hand.”
These front-row seats extended to developments in aviation, officials said.
“That got us in the door with Uber and Bell, on drones and VTOL’s [vertical takeoff and landing] and all that,” Berry said. “So, I think we’ve been fortunate because of the companies we’ve built relationships with. There have been a lot of them.”
DATA CENTER GROWTH
Alliance has been able to shift and serve rapidly-shifting market needs. Of major interest to Alliance currently is the growth of data centers. It is huge in North Texas – an idea best illustrated by Facebook’s $1 billion data center at Alliance.
And the demand only grows as companies and individuals adopt new forms of technology and consume larger and larger amounts of data, Berry said.
“The data is huge,” he said. “Massive.”
Berry said a conversation with the CEO of the Facebook data center three or four years ago helped quantify for him the vastness of the data in question.
To illustrate how much data he was talking about, the, CEO asked Berry to imagine himself compressing all the multitudes of data into individual iPad tablets.
These tablets, stacked upwards, one on one, would extend two-thirds of the way to the moon.
The kicker: The CEO was only talking about data generated during the past 24 months.
After some time had passed, Berry asked the CEO how far the collected data would figuratively extend at that point
“He told me, ‘To the moon and halfway back,'” Berry said, “That’s how fast the demand for capacity is.”
Berry said disruptive technology has played a great part in Alliance’s journey.
Disruptive technologies such as e-commerce or smartphones are generally defined as technologies that significantly alter the way people or businesses operate.
Watching disruptive technology evolve is a powerful experience, company officials said,
“You’ve got all these new things happening, like autonomous vehicles,” Berry said.
Think, he said, of the amount of data current automobiles transmit and receive through GPS and similar applications.
“Well, imagine an autonomous vehicle. That’s like going to be 10 times the data that’s going to be transmitted by these autonomous vehicles. Uber flying taxis, all that. All the stuff that’s happening now with technology space is just driving this huge incremental demand for data,” Berry said.
UNIQUE MODEL
The work that went into building Alliance as a manufacturing distribution center created a unique model that the company has used to expand around the globe.
“We’re in multiple markets around the country, doing logistics and e-commerce and industrial development in southern California, Atlanta, Memphis, Chicago, Pennsylvania, northern Florida, and, of course, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston,” Berry said.
“We’re now in Poland and Germany doing the same thing over there. So we’ve really learned a lot at Alliance that has allowed us to take that knowledge and grow the business elsewhere,” he said.
And the success of Alliance continues to fuel Hillwood’s overall business growth.
“There’s probably another 20-plus years of land development opportunities for Hillwood,” he said.
As the company branches out into multiple markets, big-picture industrial development continues to be the backbone and growth platform for the commercial side.
“As a result, we’re buying and adding to and developing the land that either we already own or we’ve recently acquired,” Berry said.
HARVEST
Alliance officials remain earnest and innovative. The company’s newest project, Berry said, is called Harvest, a 3,000-home, master-planned development built around a community farm.
“Rather than building a community around a golf course, or around a swimming pool, or around another traditional amenity, we basically brought in the concept of building it around a community farm and we brought in a commercial farmer,” Berry said.
The farmer created a program where the residents are learning how to plant and grow and harvest their own produce.
Berry said the major areas of Alliance growth are in office and mixed-use development and data center development playing off the big Facebook project, and e-commerce. He also cited Amazon, Walmart.com, FedEx and UPS, and their e-commerce activity as very influential.
“This is a huge driver of our macro-economy,” Berry said.
The original vision for Alliance 30 years ago was driven by the development of the airport, he said.
“We were trying to focus on creating this industrial airport and all the things that can happen around it,” Berry said. “We didn’t really understand how it could be an engine to create almost a small city. And so all the things that you need to build when you’re building a city, kind of over the years, have evolved, and the importance of infrastructure, I think, was probably one of the things that we didn’t totally understand.”
But they do now.