Why would Wells Fargo be looking for several hundred thousand square feet of office space in Dallas? I cannot imagine the bank would reduce its footprint in Charlotte. Is this tied to moving out of San Francisco?
Where will Goldman Sachs land for its new North Texas campus? [The Dallas Morning News]
BY Tribune Content Agency
— 9:27 AM ET 07/23/2021
With almost 50 million square feet of vacant office space, companies moving to North Texas have plenty of options for business locations.
Major financial firms including Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs ( GS )
and banking giant Wells Fargo ( WFC ) are reportedly scouting the Dallas-Fort Worth area for offices to house thousands of workers.
But availability of workers — not real estate — is more likely to govern where big employers land.
Real estate brokers and site selection professionals say Goldman and other big companies will probably pick spots where it is easiest to attract workers — whether they want to them to relocate to the area or they’re luring them from competing firms.
“You have to be sure you are locating in the right areas to tap the specific skills you are looking for,” said King White, CEO and founder of Dallas-based Site Selection Group. “Labor is pretty much the dominating factor.”
Financial firms have plenty of options in downtown Dallas, the Southlake and Westlake area, Plano’s Legacy business park and Las Colinas, where there are huge pools of workers for banking, insurance, mortgage and financial services firms.
Rumors that Goldman Sachs is considering a new major office center in North Texas have circulated for more than a year. Real estate brokers say the Manhattan-based financial giant, which already has a major presence in the Dallas area, has looked at options in North Tarrant County and the Plano and Frisco area.
Just recently, one report suggested that Goldman’s plans would make the Dallas area one of the company’s largest employment centers.
Goldman has more than 1,000 workers in downtown Dallas’ Trammell Crow Center and over 600 employees in a consumer banking unit in Richardson’s Galatyn Park.
Goldman Sachs ( GS ) representatives will only say “we continue to grow our presence in the Dallas area.”
As with Goldman Sachs ( GS ), there has been real estate chatter for more than a year that San Francisco-based Wells Fargo ( WFC) is looking for a large block of office space in the Dallas area where it could consolidate operations employees.
Its competitor JPMorgan Chase ( JPM ) made a similar move with its huge office campus in Plano’s Legacy West development.
Real estate brokers say Wells Fargo ( WFC ) has been eyeing several hundred thousand square feet of offices in Las Colinas and near DFW International Airport.
“We do not have anything to share at this time,” a Wells Fargo ( WFC ) representative said in an email.
Both firms would find North Texas an attractive location to expand an office operation due to the area’s labor costs and availability of real estate, say property agents and analysts.
“It 100% has to be about workers,” said Grant Pruitt, president of Dallas’ Whitebox Real Estate. “If Goldman Sachs, or any company for that matter, cannot find talent and continue to recruit good talent, then any real estate strategy would fall flat.
“Existing labor pools must be considered, but future labor pools must also be considered,” he said. “Long term, who will they be hiring?”
That’s one reason employers sometimes flock to business districts that already have large numbers of workers in their industry.
“There are a number of companies that have historically set up shop next to their competitors and recruited the talent from their competitors,” Pruitt said. “They attracted skilled workers that were, more or less, already trained with higher wages, better culture, more perks, etc.
“However, there are other companies that prefer to go the other route and stay as far away from their competitors as they can,” he said. “In Goldman’s case, though, they have been in New York competing with everyone else in a very close proximity, so I would anticipate the competition not being as much of a concern and the existence of the labor pool being the ultimate driving force.”
Downtown Dallas boosters are hoping that Goldman and other big office space users take a good look at the central business district. There’s more than 7 million square feet of empty office space downtown.
“Downtown Dallas has solidified our position as a top choice for business relocation and expansion,” said Kourtny Garrett, CEO of the economic development group Downtown Dallas Inc. “Massive public and private investment over the last decade, combined with more than $4 billion in development underway, has transformed the area into a vibrant place for arts, recreation, innovation and quality of life.”
That’s important for businesses that want to recruit and hang on to a diverse population of employees.
“They really are looking for more of that live, work and play environment,” said White of Site Selection Group. “They want to have all the amenities in nearby walking distance.
“That drives them to consider downtown areas because you get the walking amenities.”