4,000 new jobs, higher wages: What Fort Worth’s economy can expect in 2024

Fort Worth had a standout year in job growth and private investment in 2023.

With several companies relocating to and expanding within Fort Worth, more than 4,000 new jobs are on their way to the city.

It’s all part of about $2 billion the city’s economic development department helped generate this year in capital expenditures, or money spent by companies buying land or buildings in Fort Worth.

Projects brought to the Fort Worth City Council in August alone represented $1 billion in investment, the department said. And there were two times more projects won this year than the year before, with average job wages increasing by 9% and salary commitments increasing by 21%, according to the department.

In a Star-Telegram interview, Robert Sturns, the city’s director of economic development, shared details about Fort Worth’s successful year and what residents can expect in 2024.

Q: What have been the biggest economic development wins for the city in 2023?

“Beginning to make forward on the Texas A&M hub is a huge piece of what we’ve been working on,” Sturns said. “Again, we talked about that being a really catalytic development for the southern end of downtown as a tier one research university. We’re very excited about that.”

DrinkPak and Siemens have been particularly big wins given the number of jobs they’ve created in Council District 8, Sturns said. Expansion of both companies in Fort Worth is expected to create more than 1,700 jobs with nearly $600 million in investment.

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Q: What could change for Fort Worth next year?

“I think next year is going to be a little bit of a challenge,” Sturns said. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the capital markets and so that’s going to have some impact on deal flow.”

Sturns expects industrial real estate activity to remain strong, but is uncertain where office real estate activity will be in 2024.

“Industrial has really been Fort Worth’s bread and butter,” Sturns said. “I think we’ll probably fare pretty well in that case, but I think office is going to continue to be a challenge as we head into 2024 unless there’s some drastic change in the interest rates.”

Q: What types of projects could Fort Worth see next year?

Sturns declined to share details about projects in the works but hinted about existing Fort Worth “megasites” prime for redevelopment — 5,200 acres at and surrounding Veale Ranch, and 7,200 acres at Walsh Ranch. Sturns described the available land as some of Fort Worth’s biggest benefits.

“We talk about what that represents from a development standpoint,” Sturns said. “That really puts us in a good position to go after some pretty significant projects. I think we’ll continue to try to promote those opportunities and see what we can develop out of those. There’s been significant interest in those sites.”

Fort Worth’s pipeline is strong heading into the first quarter of 2024, but the city could start to see some challenges in the latter half of the year, Sturns said. If the city can “tie down some of these larger projects” in the next few months, Fort Worth will be in a good position for 2024, Sturns said.

Q: If you could change anything about Fort Worth, what would it be?

Many innovative companies launch startups in Fort Worth but can’t find funding to further scale their businesses, so they end up leaving, Sturns said.

“It’s always good to recruit companies to the city, but it’s even better to grow your own and keep them here and have them scale up,” Sturns said. “If I had a magic wand, that would probably be the one thing that I would say, ‘Let’s figure out a way to help these other companies continue to scale their operations in the city.’”

Sturns said the issue stems from a lack of venture capital funding, or early-stage investment in startups, within Fort Worth. Generating investment in land and buildings is a “concrete thing” that investors understand, but the return on investment from technology, medical innovation, biotech and life sciences is sometimes harder to quantify for people who haven’t traditionally operated in the startup space.

“We’ve got to be able to get some of our local entities, foundations and well-established individuals to look to invest in some of these companies,” Sturns said. “I think if we start to see that and there’s some successes, that would really start to attract some outside venture capital to help us grow, but that’s probably the biggest challenge—the funding situation when it comes to these companies scaling.”

Q: What do you think about when you have to be strategic and selective in choosing which companies receive incentives?

“The first thing that we’re focused on is high-paying jobs,” Sturns said. “We really want to ensure that we are building up our workforce, that we’re attracting jobs or retaining jobs that are going to ensure that people can have a livable wage.”

If the city is going to put the public dollar into companies, they need to be really impactful and help the city thrive and grow, Sturns said.

“Wages and jobs are really key to that,” Sturns said. “Then, obviously, the capital investment portion of it. We’re the 13th largest city in the country, so we shouldn’t be playing small ball either, and the types of companies that we look at are reflective of that.”

There is a growing number of companies that come to Fort Worth without any incentives. Sturns said he hopes this trend will continue, because his job is to put economic development “out of existence.”

“We want to create an environment and a community that is attractive to business, regardless of incentives,” Sturns said. “At the end of the day, businesses should want to be here because of the talent, workforce, the community and all the different attributes that Fort Worth has.”

Q: What do you wish Fort Worth residents knew about economic development behind the scenes?

Attracting businesses is a pretty rigorous process, Sturns said. It takes time to analyze the companies and negotiate deals while balancing what residents want to see, what makes sense from a financial standpoint and what business the city can actually attract, Sturns said.

“There’s a lot of different avenues that you have to approach and deal with when you’re trying to do large-scale corporate recruitment,” Sturns said.

Q: What are some other notable takeaways from this year?

Fort Worth’s Main Street pilot program and the city’s annual business plan competition are highlights, Sturns said.

The three-year Main Street revitalization program started giving Fort Worth’s Historic Northside and Polytechnic neighborhoods an economic boost in 2022. Since the program’s launch, the neighborhoods have secured a combined $340,000 in grants, private funding and sponsorships, according to the economic development department.

“We launched that program in an effort to give the community some ownership of what happens in these corridors,” Sturns said.

Seventeen of the 20 businesses that participated in this year’s annual business plan competition were minority- or women-owned companies, the strongest diversity in the competition’s 12-year history. This was also the first time the competition included representation from seven of the city’s council districts.

“It’s really impactful to our small businesses,” Sturns said. “Small businesses are the backbone of the community. You can recruit all the large-scale developers you want, but if you don’t have a solid small business space, you don’t have a good community.”

Sturns said the city’s annual business plan competition is his favorite event of the year.

“I get more joy out of that than anything I do during the year, because they are so excited they’re getting this opportunity to get their business off the ground,” Sturns said.