City Of Fort Worth: Economic Development Strategic Plan Update Calls For Bold Initiatives

Press release from City of Fort Worth:

February 22, 2022

In December 2017, the City of Fort Worth’s Economic Development Department published the city’s first Economic Development Strategic Plan, developed with assistance from TIP Strategies Inc.

The goal of that plan was to identify strategies to help Fort Worth become a hub for creative businesses and identify additional opportunities to enhance Fort Worth’s economic status in the region and across the nation, over the next five years and beyond.

Much has changed since the plan was originally crafted in 2017. For starters, Fort Worth has grown from the 15th to the 13th largest city in the nation, according to the 2020 Census, with a booming population set to pass the 1 million mark by 2024.

With this additional growth, as well as the economic disruption resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Fort Worth turned once again to TIP Strategies last year to review and update the 2017 plan. This “refresh” would determine whether any of the original recommendations – including metrics, target industries and plan objectives – should be revised for Fort Worth’s current needs, and how Fort Worth can build upon its existing foundation to create a roadmap for further economic development success.

The complete 2022 Economic Development Strategic Plan update is available online. 

“We’re looking forward to rolling up our sleeves and getting to work on the recommendations from our 2022 strategic plan update,” said Robert Sturns, the city’s director of economic development. “A lot has happened since the strategic plan was first created in 2017, and while Fort Worth has seen a fair amount of success since then, there’s still a lot more work to be done to address well-known gaps in our local ecosystem and strategically set up our city for long-term economic success.”

As part of this update, Fort Worth’s list of target sectors from 2017 was reevaluated based on current conditions to assess their continued relevancy. After some data analysis, the eight sectors from the original 2017 plan were restructured into five target sectors, which have been identified as key focus points for Fort Worth moving forward.

These five sectors already have a strong presence in Fort Worth, and demonstrate significant potential for future growth and future investment. They are:

• Mobility
  • Automotive
  • Distribution & E-Commerce
  • Transportation & Logistics
• Aerospace & Defense
  • Aerospace Vehicles & Defense
  • Federal Government (Military)
  • Information Technology (IT) & Analytical Instruments
• Energy
  • Alternative Electric Power
  • Electric Power Distribution
  • Drilling Wells
  • Oil & Gas Machinery
  • Support activities for Oil & Gas Operations
• Culture
  • Hospitality & Tourism
  • Performing Arts
  • Local Community & Civic Organizations
  • Local Hospitality Establishments
• Anchors & Innovators
  • Colleges, Universities & Professional Schools
  • Hospitals
  • Research Organizations
  • Computer Services
  • Corporate Headquarters
  • Engineering Services
  • Biopharmaceutical Products

Also, while several of the goals and initiatives in the original 2017 strategic plan remain relevant, there is more urgent need for action on specific initiatives due to the convergence of three major factors: economic trends and disruptions accelerated by COVID-19, new opportunities for real estate development and business growth in Fort Worth, and ongoing workforce challenges – including social inequities – further worsened by the pandemic.

Given these factors, there is an opportunity for Fort Worth to capitalize on several bold initiatives in the coming years.

The first initiative is to create and adopt an investment framework to drive public-private development projects, align city incentives to create new jobs and private sector investment, and build capacity in Fort Worth businesses.

While there are several partners involved in driving Fort Worth’s economic development efforts – including the city’s Economic Development Department, the Fort Worth Chamber, the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce, Visit Fort Worth and others – there is an opportunity for Fort Worth to make a greater collective impact through an established investment framework. To maximize this impact, the city can align its tools, resources and partnerships around the following four verticals:

• Deal closing. The deal closing vertical will address needed funding for citywide marketing efforts and financial incentives for companies considering new projects in Fort Worth that contribute significant capital investment and new employment opportunities to the city’s economy. Additional goals under this vertical include deploying asset-driven, high-impact external marketing campaigns to raise Fort Worth’s profile in support of deal closing and redevelopment opportunities, prioritizing deal closing funds for projects in the city’s target sectors, aligning processes with recommendations from the city’s Task Force on Race & Culture by incentivizing projects paying at or above median wages and providing more aggressive incentives for projects in underserved areas, and develop specific scoring guidelines around incentives.
• Targeted area development. The targeted area development vertical invests in priority geographic areas and corridors to enhance equitable development efforts in Fort Worth. Additional goals under this vertical include launching a land banking project to identify prime redevelopment opportunities in underserved parts of Fort Worth, advancing catalytic projects in Southeast and East Fort Worth that are anchored by major employers, mixed-use developments, and neighborhood amenities, drive public-private partnerships to expand office space in the urban core, hotel and convention facilities in Downtown, and the creation of small area plans / redevelopment of aging shopping malls and big-box retail developments across Fort Worth.
• Business equity. The business equity vertical provides programming and resources to create opportunities for firms owned by women and people of color in the City of Fort Worth. Additional goals in this vertical include the support of the recently launched CDFI Friendly Fort Worth while working with economic development partners to reach the goal of $100 million in new CDFI financing over the next five years.
• Innovation. The innovation vertical catalyzes projects that will propel the City of Fort Worth toward tech-enabled development, Smart City infrastructure and innovative growth. Additional goals in this vertical include investing in green enhancements to the city’s resource, energy, water and waste efficiency processes, incentivizing green building development, hosting reverse pitch competition to solicit innovative solutions to city issues and industry challenges, investing in new technologies and infrastructure that positions Fort Worth as a leading city in future-oriented mobility, including electric vehicle infrastructure, and support the creation of a privately funded venture fund and accelerator in Fort Worth.

The second initiative is to position Fort Worth for equitable real estate development across the city, including catalytic projects in historically underserved areas and foundational infrastructure in new growth centers. This will be accomplished through a combination of external funding, city resources and private-sector engagement.

This initiative includes:

• Catalytic projects in east and southeast Fort Worth. East and southeast Fort Worth have been largely overlooked for investment, business development, and major projects for too long, and that narrative needs to change if Fort Worth is going to achieve its goal of becoming a city that values diversity, equity and inclusion. Specific recommendations focus on projects already started in the Evans and Rosedale urban village and the Stop Six Choice Neighborhood Initiative, as well as the need to work with local restaurant owners and national chains to identify and develop new sit-down restaurants in the area and encourage the opening of a new grocery store to provide residents with improved access to fresh, healthy foods.
• Master development plan for west Fort Worth. The area along I-20 and I-30, centered around Walsh Ranch, needs a master development plan to increase industrial and residential development while prioritizing environmentally sustainable development.
• Signature projects in the urban core. This recommendation to concentrate activities on signature real estate development projects that drive new investment is geared around the expansion and redevelopment of the Fort Worth Convention Center, the launch of public-private partnerships to develop at least 1 million square feet of Class A office space in and around downtown by 2026, and continued work with the iter8 Health Innovation Community to attract new medical and life science innovation to the district. Additionally, this recommendation calls for supporting the long-term development of Panther Island, high-quality redevelopment projects in the Fort Worth Stockyards, the long-term redevelopment of Butler Place and major mixed-use and supporting smaller-scale projects in the West 7th/Cultural District area. (Also included is a recommendation to work with local partners on transit-oriented development projects within a 10-minute walk of the TEXRail North Side Station.)
• Citywide urban and mixed-use development. This recommendation calls for transforming strategic sites and corridors with existing urban and low-density uses to diverse, walkable, mixed-use districts with new and reactivated spaces for workers and entrepreneurial communities. This includes the area around Altamesa Boulevard/McCart Avenue, the redevelopment of aging bix-box shopping centers, the redevelopment of large surface parking lots, the creation of more public green spaces to better connect commercial corridors and adjacent neighborhoods, and revised land use/development regulations to allow and incentivize ground-floor commercial space in multi-floor, mixed-use structures along high-traffic arterial roads.
• Equitable infrastructure investments. This recommendation focuses on several necessary investments in infrastructure across the city, and Fort Worth’s ability to work with regional, state and federal partners to leverage external funding to assist in these improvements. These improvements include fiber and 5G capabilities, transportation infrastructure investments in new roadway capacity, and a more streamlined permitting process for equitable infrastructure investments.

The third initiative is to focus on human capital investments that attract, retain and develop a broad base of creative talent in Fort Worth. This includes:

• Future-focused workforce and industry partnerships. This recommendation calls for increased focus on workforce partnerships and the need to identify and cultivate a workforce for current and future in-demand occupations, as well as those whose skillsets relate to Fort Worth’s target industries. This initiative includes an education component, and also calls for support of existing programs that work to overcome barriers to employment, including transportation and access to childcare.
• Inclusive talent attraction and retention. An inclusive talent strategy allows Fort Worth to tell a compelling and true story about its brand and image as a place to live and work, and that message should gradually grow from a local to a regional and eventually statewide and national audience, including highly targeted audiences that reflect specific skill sets and match with local employer and industry needs. Recommendations include supporting partner marketing efforts and providing the area’s major employers with marketing resources that effectively promote Fort Worth to their potential employees by highlighting the city’s newest and most exciting amenities. Specific targets include high-priority occupations, young professionals, remote workers and other key audiences through these efforts.
• Higher education expansion. This recommendation includes supporting Fort Worth’s existing higher education institutions, as well as engaging higher education institutions of sources of talent from outside of Fort Worth.
• Small-business capacity building. This recommendation calls for expanding neighborhood-scale small business development and building capacity in Fort Worth’s small businesses, with a focus on business equity firms and minority-owned businesses.

Get articles like this in your inbox. Subscribe to City News.

This press release was produced by City of Fort Worth. The views expressed here are the author’s own.