Fort Worth’s Economic Development Plan:
1. Establish Fort Worth’s Competitive Edge
• Brand and Image: Elevate the profile of Fort Worth at regional, national and international levels.
• Marketing and Target Industry Recruitment: Attract new investments and businesses into the community, focusing on target industries that align with Fort Worth’s assets.
• Business Retention and Expansion: Improve the competitiveness of existing businesses and help them remain and grow.
• Workforce and Industry Partnerships: Expand collaboration between employers and training providers to address the needs of local industries and build a pipeline of talent to fuel business growth.
2. Become a Hub for Creative Businesses
• Near Southside Medical Innovation District: Enhance and expand the Near Southside’s role as a medical innovation district and position it to become the most livable medical district in the United States.
• Entrepreneurship: Build on the dynamic environment that embraces and fuels high-growth business in Fort Worth. Ensure that expanding startups see the city as hospitable to their continuing growth.
• Broader Promotion of the Arts: Expand the connection between the arts community and technology entrepreneurs as well as established businesses.
• Establish a “Futures Forum” at the City: Create a formal working group, led by the mayor, that addresses city issues from a “futures perspective.”
3. Ensure Community Vitality
• Downtown Fort Worth: Accelerate downtown Fort Worth’s emergence as the premier mixed-use business district in Texas.
• Neighborhood Alignment: Align neighborhood assets (people, businesses and real estate) to benefit from and support citywide economic growth.
• Small Business Support: Restructure small-business assistance based on a community-wide audit.
4. Tools and Resources
• Economic Development Bond Package: Identify how the citywide bond package makes investments in livability, Smart City infrastructure and business development. Elevate projects that impact economic development goals.
• Citywide Incentive Program: Create new incentive tools to encourage business growth in target industries and to facilitate development and re-development in designated districts.
• Organizational Alignment: Clarify the roles and responsibilities of Fort Worth’s economic development partners; build a shared framework for decision-making and on-going collaboration.
To read the plan: fortworthtexas.gov/edplan