The drivers on I-20 and I-45 likely had no idea they were cruising alongside an 18-wheeler operated by artificial intelligence when Kodiak Robotics allowed me to ride in one of its autonomous vehicles on a rainy day in late January. From the seat of a standard vehicle, the safety driver likely appeared like any other trucker—but this operator didn’t have his hands on the wheel. As the truck safely navigated lane changes, overpasses, exits, and merges, my latent fears were put to rest.

Kodiak Robotics’ Lancaster operations hub is helping build the future of logistics where driverless vehicles will aid the nation with a labor shortage that has already arrived. The American Trucking Association estimates that the U.S. trucking industry is already short 80,000 drivers, and the number could double by 2030. Trucking moves 72 percent of the nation’s freight, and there already aren’t enough people to move the merchandise.

Kodiak Robotics is among the technology firms trying to address the shortage with artificial intelligence, and it is well on its way. The Lancaster operations hub is the seven-year-old San Francisco-based company’s center of excellence, testing new truck models and technology and serving as a command center for its vehicles. Kodiak’s technology is equipping vehicles already on roads between Atlanta and Phoenix, delivering freight via autonomous trucks for Walmart, Maersk, Ikea, and J.B. Hunt.

The company chose Dallas as its center of excellence because of the friendly regulatory environment, relatively good weather, and of course, miles of highway. The organization has worked with Hillwood’s Mobility Innovation Zone at Alliance, offering Kodiak a chance to train its technology in a freight environment with air, rail, and trucking modalities.

“It’s a convenient location that’s super efficient for testing and development,” says Kodiak CEO Don Burnette. “Hillwood and Alliance offer that capability and freight volume, so access to strategic partners is a huge advantage as well.”

During my visit to their depot near the intersections of I-20 and I-35 earlier this month, I was able to step into one of the Kodiak-branded 18-wheelers and ride with the team to see how the vehicle operated in traffic. With programmed following distances, defensive merging and lane changes, and a setting that automatically slows down when passing a stalled vehicle, the ride felt controlled and safe, even in busy traffic with slick roads and rainfall. If I hadn’t known I was being driven by artificial intelligence and hadn’t looked at the steering wheel, I would never have known.

A safety driver and another employee staffed the vehicle to monitor the trucks’ sensors and technology. Kodiak’s technology doesn’t rely on previously mapped routes and roads. It senses everything in real-time and makes adjustments as necessary.

The radar and lidar-enabled vehicles’ safe driving has delivered 10 percent fuel savings compared to a human driver. Not to mention that the AI doesn’t need to eat, sleep, or use stimulants to stay awake. Most of the company’s freight runs are between 10 and 12 hours or one day’s drive. Burnette says we are likely still several years away from entirely driverless long-haul trucks because there are hurdles like fueling and parking where humans are still needed, but the company launched driverless trucks in a different setting earlier this year.

The Launch of Driverless Trucking

The commercial launch of driverless trucks has long been a goal for the industry, and Kodiak recently made it a reality. An Austin-based company called Atlas Energy Solutions owns trucks outfitted with Kodiak Driver and operates them in the oil fields of West Texas in a truly unique setting. Atlas delivers sand around West Texas to be shot into fissures in the shale and push out extra oil via fracking.

The company built a 42-mile autonomous conveyor system across West Texas ranches that delivers sand from the sand mines to the oil rigs. Atlas’ Kodiak-driven vehicles take the sand from the conveyor belt on a 21-mile offroad route closer to the wells. The trips are the first time a customer has taken ownership of a RoboTruck and launched completely driverless commercial semi-trucking operations.

The driverless trucks made their first deliveries at the end of last year. This was the first time a company has owned and operated their own vehicles quipped with Kodiak’s technology, but Kodiak’s goal is to get out of the trucking business and be the tech behind the logistics.

“Those trucks are out running as we speak, which is pretty incredible,” Burnette says. “They have no driver in them and can operate 24/7, and Atlas is a 24/7 business out in the Permian. Now it’s all about scaling, delivering more trucks, providing more value, and improving efficiency.”

Because the Kodiak technology doesn’t rely on mapping, the vehicles can function in unmapped areas like off-road environments, making their use in West Texas a perfect fit. Even if it is the first time the vehicle has experienced a road or terrain, the AI can navigate its surroundings. This capability made the technology an ideal candidate for another client: the military.

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FORT WORTH, Texas (February 4, 2025)—AllianceTexas, Hillwood’s 27,000-acre master-planned, mixed-use development in north Fort Worth, remains one of the nation’s most formidable economic engines. Over the past 35 years, it has generated an estimated $130 billion in regional economic impact, with more than $10.2 billion created in 2024 alone, according to Insight Research Corporation’s annual economic impact report. In addition, AllianceTexas has produced $4.2 billion in total property taxes paid to local public entities in that time span.

Total investment at AllianceTexas surpassed $16.3 billion in 2024, with $15.2 billion coming from the private sector. Public investment totaling $1.1 billion has been invested in the project to date, representing a 14-to-1 private-to-public-dollar investment multiple. The multiple on the cumulative economic impact of $130 billion is almost 130 to 1.

See the full AllianceTexas Annual Economic Impact Report here.

AllianceTexas is now home to 590 companies, generating 66,269 direct jobs. Since 1989, 60 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space have been built. The development is home to corporate headquarters, healthcare providers, higher education centers, shopping and entertainment destinations and vibrant residential communities.

“2024 was a phenomenal year for Hillwood, culminating with AllianceTexas reaching $130 billion in total economic impact for the North Texas region,” said Mike Berry, president of Hillwood. “Thanks to our forward-thinking outlook and partnership between public and private sectors, we’ve built something that will last for many decades to come. About 70,000 people come to work at AllianceTexas each day for some of the world’s most iconic brands. These companies, including Amazon, FedEx, BNSF Railway, Meta, Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments, Deloitte and UPS, continue to be attracted to Fort Worth’s business-friendly environment and workforce.”

Hillwood’s 35th anniversary year proved to be a defining moment, with transformative projects and strategic partnerships reinforcing its legacy as a leader in real estate development.

A major highlight of 2024 was Hillwood’s collaboration with the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG), the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the City of Fort Worth, and the City of Haslet to secure an $80 million Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant. This funding is a critical component of a broader $262 million public-private partnership designed to double activity at the AllianceTexas inland port, accelerating the expansion of its industrial real estate platform. The AllianceTexas Smart Port was the only project selected from Texas and one of just 44 awarded nationwide.

“From AllianceTexas’ leadership as an economic driver for our region to capturing the expanding industrial market and creating our cities’ most desirable residential communities, Hillwood continually charts the course for other developers to follow,” Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker said. “AllianceTexas is already a thriving corporate destination, and by winning the $80 million INFRA grant, it is ready to redefine what it means to be a modern logistics hub. AllianceTexas sets the standard nationally for providing companies with innovative resources and opportunities for growth.”

Hillwood also celebrated significant milestones in 2024 with key corporate partners. Southwire, the largest manufacturer of wire and cable used in electricity transmission and distribution, opened its nearly 1.2 million-square-foot DFW Customer Service Center, employing 250 team members. Additionally, Henry Schein, the world’s largest provider of healthcare solutions to office-based dental and medical practitioners, launched its largest single-building distribution center within its global network, bringing approximately 300 jobs to AllianceTexas.

Further strengthening its industrial footprint, Hillwood announced the launch of Alliance Westport 24, a 1.1 million-square-foot speculative industrial building, and Alliance Westport 14, a 766,994-square-foot facility. These developments are part of Hillwood’s strategic plan to deliver 3.5 million square feet of new industrial space at AllianceTexas, providing expansion and relocation solutions for its current and prospective customer base.

Aerospace additions at Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport further underscored Hillwood’s impact. Embraer announced an expansion that will create approximately 250 new aviation jobs while strengthening its support for E-Jets customers. AVX Aircraft Company established its new headquarters, complete with a 7,000-square-foot prototype lab, where it will test unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for military and commercial applications.

Expanding its vision beyond logistics and industrial development, Hillwood broke ground on Landmark, a first-of-its-kind, 3,200-acre mixed-use development in the City of Denton. Developed in partnership with Hillwood Communities, Landmark will feature 6,000 new homes, 5 million square feet of commercial and mixed-use space, and over 3,000 multifamily units along a five-mile stretch of I-35W. The project is designed around a 1,100-acre green ecosystem with parks, trails, recreation and S.T.E.A.M.-focused learning spaces.

Geographically, AllianceTexas encompasses nine municipalities, five independent school districts and two counties. Since 1990, $4.2 billion has been paid in property taxes cumulatively to the Cities of Fort Worth, Haslet, Roanoke, Northlake, Westlake and Corral City; Tarrant and Denton Counties; and Northwest, Keller, and Argyle Independent School Districts (City of Denton, Denton ISD, the City of Justin, and the City of Argyle were not included in the 2024 report, as development is still forthcoming). In 2024 alone, the project contributed $343.9 million in property taxes to these local entities.

MP Materials (NYSE: MP) has achieved a milestone in “restoring the U.S. rare earth magnet supply chain” at its flagship Independence facility in Fort Worth, the company announced. The facility has begun commercial production of neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) metal and trial production of automotive-grade, sintered neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets. A leading MP customer: General Motors and its electric vehicles.

NdFeB magnets are the world’s most powerful and efficient permanent magnets—serving as essential components in vehicles, drones, robotics, electronics, and aerospace and defense systems. But the U.S. has relied almost entirely on foreign sources for these critical inputs “for decades,” MP Materials said.

The Las Vegas-based company said it’s addressing that gap by building the Fort Worth plant, which it calls “the United States’ first fully integrated rare earth metal, alloy, and magnet manufacturing.”

MP began building the 200,000-SF plant in Hillwood’s AllianceTexas development in April 2022. Last March, MP received a $58.5 million award in the form of a 48C Advanced Energy Project tax credit allocation issued by the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department. The award was meant to advance MP’s planned delivery of products for General Motors’ EVs.

MP said its newly announced production achievements are bringing the U.S. closer to reestablishing “a fully integrated, domestic supply chain for these critical components for the first time in decades.”

Marking ‘a major step forward’

“This milestone marks a major step forward in restoring a fully integrated rare earth magnet supply chain in the United States,” James Litinsky, founder, chairman, and CEO of MP Materials, said in a statement. “With record-setting upstream and midstream production at Mountain Pass and both metal and magnet production underway at Independence, we’ve reached a significant turning point for MP and U.S. competitiveness in a vital sector.”

MP’s trial production of magnets in Fort Worth “will switch to commercial production towards the end of the year,” Chief Communications Officer Matt Sloustcher told Dallas Innovates, adding that the magnets “will power the drive motors in GM electric vehicles.”

The Fort Worth plant could ultimately power some 500,000 EV motors every year, the company said in 2021.

Record-setting production at Mountain Pass 

With commercial NdPr metal production already online and trial production of sintered magnets underway, the Fort Worth Independence facility is poised to produce around 1,000 metric tons of finished NdFeB magnets per year, with a gradual production ramp beginning in late 2025, the company said.

The Fort Worth facility will supply magnets to General Motors and other manufacturers, sourcing its raw materials from Mountain Pass, MP Materials’ mine and processing facility in California.

Last year, MP Materials achieved record-breaking production at Mountain Pass, the company said, delivering more than 45,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides (REO) contained in concentrate—”an all-time high for U.S. primary production.”

Mountain Pass, America’s only active rare earth mining and processing operation of scale, also set a midstream production record, producing roughly 1,300 metric tons of NdPr oxide in 2024, in addition to cerium, lanthanum, and other separated and refined products, MP said.

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A self-driving-vehicle technology company is setting up shop at Hillwood’s AllianceTexas in north Fort Worth.

Virginia-based Torc Robotics Inc. announced Jan. 7 it will open a 22,000-square-foot office at 13119 Old Denton Road to test autonomous trucks and customer freight pilots and commercialization efforts targeted in 2027. Torc is a subsidiary of German vehicle giant Daimler Truck AG, part of Mercedes-Benz Group. Torc has leased the space and plans to build the new facility during the first half of this year.

The 17-acre site will feature a customer experience center, offices and control centers for fleet management and operations. Executives at Torc cite the central location as one reason for the office location, with major interstate routes leading to trade hubs such as Laredo. Laredo is the largest economic port of entry in the country, seeing $320 billion in trade in 2023, according to the Laredo Economic Development Corp.

“This new hub will enable us to better serve our current and future customers, enhance our operational capabilities, and drive forward the adoption of autonomous technology in the logistics industry,” Torc CEO Peter Vaughan Schmidt said in a statement. “As we work toward commercialization, the new hub will give us access to talent, resources and routes that we didn’t previously have, and we’re excited about the growth opportunities ahead.”

Dallas-Fort Worth is known as a hub for transportation innovation and AllianceTexas has become a hub of autonomous vehicle activity. Startup TuSimple operated an autonomous trucking hub in Alliance although it has since pivoted to AI gaming technology. Autonomous box car company Gatik, which works with grocers such as Kroger, operates in Alliance.

Ian Kinne, director of logistics innovation at Hillwood, said long highway routes to major destinations, state policy that’s friendly to testing and operating the technology and good weather are all factors that attract autonomous vehicle companies to the area. Many companies test technology at the Alliance Mobility Innovation Zone.

“Our goal is not to just to be a place where technology companies come, but also a place where our customers feel encouraged to deploy some of their maybe more challenging technologies that they think could be transformational to their business,” Kinne said. “And so by having groups like Torc here, we think that further enables a lot of our customers to not just introduce technology for technology sake, but to build reliability and resiliency into their supply chain models.” 

Torc also plans to expand in Ann Arbor, Michigan and hire more than 100 positions. The company has engineering offices in Austin and Montreal.

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New space in AllianceTexas will support the growth and development of Torc’s autonomous driving product.

Torc, an independent subsidiary of?Daimler Truck AG?and a pioneer in commercializing self-driving vehicle technology, today announced the company has signed a leasing agreement for a facility located in Hillwood’s AllianceTexas development that will serve as Torc’s autonomous truck hub in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The new location will be a hub for Torc’s autonomous testing efforts, customer freight pilots, and future commercialization slated for 2027.

The site will feature a customer experience center, offices, and dedicated control centers for fleet management and operations. Well into productization, Torc’s expansion in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area positions the company for the next phase of autonomous driving and provides a strategic advantage due to its proximity to a major freight route between Dallas and Laredo, Texas, on Interstate 35. Laredo is the largest economic port of entry in the US, with more than 15,000 truck crossings per day and $320B in total trade last year, opening up a prime opportunity for Torc’s growth.

“Establishing our presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a key region for the future of autonomous trucking, is a critical milestone for Torc,” commented Peter Vaughan Schmidt, CEO. “This new hub will enable us to better serve our current and future customers, enhance our operational capabilities, and drive forward the adoption of autonomous technology in the logistics industry. As we work toward commercialization, the new hub will give us access to talent, resources and routes that we didn’t previously have, and we’re excited about the growth opportunities ahead.”

“Opening our Dallas Fort Worth hub is a testament to the incredible progress Torc has made. This new hub not only expands our operational footprint but also reinforces our commitment to advancing autonomous technology,” said Andrew Culhane, Chief Commercial Officer for Torc. “This comes on the heels of the successful product acceptance test validation of our autonomous trucks without a driver in a multi-lane, closed-course, highway-speed environment, further showcasing our dedication to the highest safety and product maturity standards. As we continue through the productization phase of our development cycle, we are excited about the future and the opportunities this new hub opens up.”

“We are excited to welcome Torc to AllianceTexas. This collaboration highlights Hillwood’s commitment to fostering mobility innovation and building a more resilient supply chain ecosystem with industry-leading technology, reliable infrastructure, and forward-thinking customers,” said Ian Kinne, Director of Logistics Innovation at Hillwood. “The strategic location of this hub along the critical freight corridor of Interstate 35 is a testament to some of the unique advantages of AllianceTexas. Torc’s presence here will further drive innovation, enhance connectivity, and provide significant value to our customers as we work toward a more efficient and connected future in logistics.”

The hub will be located at 13119 Old Denton Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76177, and Torc plans to start occupying the new space early this year. The new site includes an 18-acre facility and 22,000 square feet of office space. The facility will be built out over the first half of 2025, ensuring it complies with the standards required for autonomous vehicle operations.

Announced in late 2024, Torc is also expanding its workforce in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area, where it plans to hire more than 100 positions in the coming months.

The Dallas-Fort Worth metro was the hottest destination in the country for where people were moving last year, according to the latest annual ranking from U-Haul International Inc.

Austin ranked No. 5 among the top U.S. growth metros in 2024, and Houston ranked No. 9.

Texas was the No. 2 state for move-ins — bested from the top spot after three consecutive years by South Carolina, according to data released Jan. 2 and Jan. 3.

The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area was followed on the recent list by Charlotte, North Carolina (No. 2); Phoenix (No. 3); and, Lakeland, Florida (No. 4).

U-Haul collects migration data from more than 2.5 million one-way U-Haul truck, trailer and moving container rentals for the year. It ranks the top “growth states” and “growth metros” by net gain, which contrasts the number of one-way U-Haul trucks entering a city or market versus those leaving.

U-Haul migration trends don’t directly correlate to an area’s population or economic growth, though the company said its ranking is an “effective gauge of how well states, metros and cities are attracting and maintaining residents.” This data can inform the real estate crowd on potential housing needs and can tell businesses where corporate players, and their workers, are headed.

The Lone Star State has held the first or second rank each year since 2016, U-Haul reported. North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee round out the five leading growth states.

And, for the fifth year in a row, California reflected the largest net loss of one-way movers, according to the data.

U-Haul’s findings support recent population trends in the state. A lot of growth has been happening in the Dallas metro. In 2024, Fort Worth surpassed Austin as Texas’ fourth-largest city, according to recent estimates from the Texas Demographic Center. Fort Worth also ranks as the fastest-growing city in the state, as well as the fastest-growing of the 30 most populous cities in the country.

Kaufman County, east of Dallas, posted the highest percentage growth of any county in the state between 2020 and Jan. 1 2024, up 26.7% to 184,070 people. But the city of Dallas and Dallas County eked out only meager gains, according to the latest population estimates.

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Thirty-five years after starting AllianceTexas, the 27,000-acre development that defines the far north side of Fort Worth, Ross Perot Jr. has only one regret. “I’d buy a lot more land,” he said. Visiting Alliance today, it’s hard to visualize what this vast corridor along Interstate 35W looked like before the landscape was filled with thousands of homes, massive industrial warehouses, sprawling corporate campuses, a bustling industrial airport and, yes, Fort Worth’s first H-E-B. When Perot started buying up property in the 1980s, most of the land was farms, ranches or empty prairie.

Over the years, Alliance has become a regional powerhouse for economic development, attracting hundreds of businesses. At least 575 companies operate here, many of them familiar household names like Amazon, Walmart and LG Electronics. Hillwood, the Perot-owned development company, estimates the project has had a $119.8 billion economic impact on North Texas since its inception.

But Alliance’s success wasn’t always certain. “Fort Worth could be mortgaging its future for a lemon,” the Star-Telegram wrote in April 1989, nine months before the opening of the development’s cornerstone, Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport, funded mostly by the FAA. “The federal government might have spent $31 million on one of the finest parking lots to ever grace a cow pasture.”

Perot was in his 20s when he began buying land for Alliance. For the son of Texas businessman and one-time presidential candidate, H. Ross Perot Sr., the development grew into a legacy-defining project. Today, Perot Jr. is the chairman of Hillwood, which develops properties across the globe.

Willed into existence by Perot, Alliance’s growth has been shepherded by Hillwood’s president, Mike Berry. After 35 years, it’s clear their gamble on once-rural property has paid off. “We thought we had a lot of land when we got started,” Perot said, “but Mike and I sit around now and go, ‘Why didn’t we buy all this land next to us?’ It is so hard to do when we had thousands of acres of land and no one’s showing up, but man, I wish I’d bought more.” Perhaps even more remarkable than Alliance’s success is that it’s nowhere close to finished — only about two-thirds of it has been developed.

‘Eagles don’t flock’

Decorated with modern, bright white paneling and dark wood, the lobby of Hillwood’s downtown Fort Worth office feels like stepping onto a perfectly staged movie set. Four backlit photos of Alliance and other Hillwood properties adorn the left wall, each displayed like a trophy. Above a pair of matching gray chairs by the glass entry doors is a quote from Ross Perot Sr. emblazoned on the wall: “Eagles don’t flock, you have to find them one at a time.” Next to it hangs a photo of father and son.

Perot bought the property that would become Alliance in 1985.

At the time, similar land around Dallas was significantly more expensive. Perot said many families that sold him their ranches were the first generation to do so, unlike in Dallas, where property had been bought and sold dozens of times. Perot Field — then called Fort Worth Alliance Airport — opened on Dec. 14, 1989, with a celebrating crowd of 300 to watch an American Airlines Boeing 757 be the first to land on the freshly paved runway. Perot, an avid aviator himself, rode in the cockpit.

Confronted by a need for more airport capacity in the Metroplex, the Federal Aviation Administration asked Perot to donate land for an airport. He agreed, but his aviation contacts told him what the region really needed was an industrial airport, not general aviation. U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright of Fort Worth pushed federal dollars for the project through Congress.

The late 1980s were tough times in Texas, where an oil bust had devastated the economy. Perot said he couldn’t get any aviation clients. That changed on June 7, 1989, when American Airlines Chairman Robert Crandall announced in City Hall that the carrier would invest over $400 million in a maintenance facility at the new airport, creating 4,500 jobs. It was such big news that NBC 5 preempted its morning soap opera “Generations” to broadcast the event live.

The Star-Telegram reported that Crandall’s announcement “virtually assured the success of Ross Perot Jr.’s grand vision to build the United States’ first airport dedicated to industrial use.”

At the time, Perot predicted that 20,000 to 30,000 people could be working at the airport in 20 or 30 years. It wasn’t meant to be with American; the carrier closed the maintenance center in 2012. But the overall Alliance development kickstarted by the airline has created over 66,000 direct jobs since then, according to Hillwood. Mike Berry — Perot’s longtime partner who is now president of Hillwood — said he was brought onto the Alliance project at its start to be a dealmaker and attract companies. He said people thought Alliance was a crazy idea at first. Many didn’t understand the opportunities that access to an industrial airport would provide. “We had to sell our ass off every day,” Berry said. “Still do, but it was different back then.”

BNSF Railway opened an intermodal hub a few miles away from the airport in 1994, changing plans for Alliance. Transport became the name of the game.

“Before Santa Fe came in, we really had no idea what we could do,” Berry told the Star-Telegram in April 1996. Perot Field and BNSF’s rail hub laid the groundwork for the development’s future role as a key mobility hub and inland port. The airport alone moved 2.5 billion pounds of cargo in 2023. The airport, railroad and access to Interstate 35 are all within a roughly two mile radius of each other. In 1994, FedEx broke ground on a $300 million sorting hub at the airport that officials expected to employ at least 600 workers.

Once major brands began making deals with Hillwood for industrial space and warehouses in Alliance, development snowballed. As the number of people working in Alliance grew, Hillwood expanded into home building. Over 14,600 homes have been built in Alliance since 1990.

‘A very unique perspective’

While luck might’ve helped, Alliance’s success is no accident. Perot and Berry have aggressively pursued new deals for decades, and the Alliance team prides itself on finding creative solutions for clients’ needs. Today, Hillwood has expanded into multi-family housing and has built retail properties, including a shopping center home to Tarrant County’s first H-E-B, to support the burgeoning population.

The company offers Alliance clients myriad services that cater to almost every need a business could have. That includes maintenance, such as landscaping and property management, and core components of new developments, like organizing public-private partnerships and building entertainment complexes. The company offers its expertise on foreign trade zones, workforce development and oil and gas.

Over the decades, Alliance has weathered just about every economic storm, from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’ve seen over this whole time, every possible recession, real estate cycle, pandemic, great financial crash,” Berry said. “I mean, almost any movie you want to see, we’ve seen the movie, and I think that gives you a very unique perspective.” Berry said one deal he wished had worked out was with Intel. The computer part maker explored building a manufacturing facility in Alliance in the mid-1990s, but the U.S. semiconductor market tanked, forcing it to halt plans in 1998. “Many deals have challenges,” Berry said. When asked about his dream deal for Alliance, Berry said he always hoped to bring a four-year university to the development. He said Hillwood explored deals, but nothing ever solidified. Tarrant County College operates a technical program at Perot Field. “It’s like building the city. You know, we ought to have every little bit of everything, quite frankly. We’re set up for everything,” Berry said.

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Bell Textron Inc. is ready to take off in north Fort Worth with an investment of $632 million in a new factory for a next-generation aircraft. 

Gov. Greg Abbott, Mayor Mattie Parker, Bell CEO Lisa Atherton and other area leaders joined together on Dec. 17 at the Bell Manufacturing Technology Center in north Fort Worth to announce final plans to open a new manufacturing plant in the Alliance area to build the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA.

“This project is obviously transformational for Tarrant County … as well as in Denton County,” said Abbott. “But also it’s transformative for the future of the state of Texas, our workforce, but maybe most importantly, it’s transformative for our United States military.” 

The project is expected to create 520 full-time jobs with an average annual salary of $85,000 by the end of 2039. Bell won the FLRAA contract in 2022. At the time, military officials said the contract was worth $1.3 billion but could end up being worth in the range of $70 billion over the long term. 

 “It’s kind of a big deal when you have an opportunity of that size come around,” Atherton said. 

The future facility will be located in a 448,000-square-foot site at 15100 N. Beach St., in AllianceTexas. In an application for state incentives filed in February, Bell said it planned to expand the building by 5,400 square feet. 

The Fort Worth City Council approved over $47 million in incentives on Dec. 10. Bell applied for tax breaks through the state via the Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation Act program, or JETI, the program that replaced a previous state incentive program. 

The Bell announcement was the first use of the new JETI program. 

Parker said the announcement is key to the city’s future as a leader in aerospace manufacturing and defense. 

“We need to continue to strive to do this,” she said. “It takes programs like this to continue to push forward.” 

The Bell plan also had to be approved by Denton County Commissioners Court and the Northwest Independent School District. Representatives from both parties were also on hand for the announcement. 

“This is monumental for us,” said Steve Montgomery, president and CEO of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. “Just think of the employment and the long-term investment this represents for generations to come. Monumental is probably the only word that fits.” 

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Before the Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport opened in 1989, Tarrant County was experiencing job loss at a rate higher than the rest of the country, said Bill Burton, executive vice president of marketing and development.

The county netted just over 750 jobs in 1989, while Collin, Dallas and Denton counties added thousands, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Two years before that, the county lost nearly 9,000 jobs in 1987.

The airport, then called the Fort Worth Alliance Airport, was the first component to open as part of AllianceTexas, which is celebrating 35 years of operation in December. In that time, the development is estimated to have created more than 66,000 jobs and left a $119.8 billion economic impact on the region, according to an AllianceTexas economic impact report released in 2024. The airport laid the foundation for the rest of the 27,000-acre mixed-use development, Burton said.

“Without the airport, we wouldn’t have had the rest of it,” Burton said. “It brought the infrastructure, it brought the investment, it brought the focus to the area that has now yielded in excess of $3.5 billion of property taxes.”

Perot Field is an industrial airport, meaning it only sees cargo flights and occasional charter flights. Several corporations, including Amazon, FedEx, Gulfstream and Tarrant County College, have opened locations at Perot Field. Alliance Aviation President Christian Childs said he believes the airport offers an environment that attracts those types of “heavy hitters.” Perot Field is ranked within the top 20 airports across the U.S. for the highest amount of cargo seen each year, Childs said.

Officials from Hillwood and AVX Aircraft held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Oct. 29 for AVX’s new 21,000-square-foot headquarters at the airport. AVX Aircraft specializes in testing unmanned aircraft systems for military and commercial purposes.

During the ceremony, AVX President and Chief Operating Officer Kendall Goodman said the new facility gives the company space to continue developing, designing and testing vertical lift technology. Attracting AVX to the airport plays into AllianceTexas’ Mobility Innovation Zone, Burton said. The zone refers to a supply chain ecosystem made up of different components, including the airport, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway intermodal hub and the AllianceTexas Flight Test Center. The zone aims to connect innovative mobility companies with resources and partnerships to commercialize new technologies related to transit.

“I love attracting [AVX Aircraft] up here because that tends to bring new energy, new focus and cavities that will continue to build on itself,” Burton said.

The airport opened under a public-private partnership between the Hillwood development company, the city of Fort Worth and the Federal Aviation Administration. The AllianceTexas development has since grown to impact Roanoke, Westlake, Northlake, Denton County, Keller ISD and other entities.

In addition to the 66,198 jobs AllianceTexas is projected to have created, more than 162,000 indirect jobs are estimated to have come from the development as well, according to the economic impact report.

Job creation can indicate location and project sustainability, said Jann Miles, a planner for Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County. In the case of AllianceTexas, Miles said she believes it’s attractive for its ability to move goods anywhere within the North American continent. AllianceTexas has also had a direct impact on the communities it’s located in. The overall development is estimated to have contributed more than $3.8 billion in property taxes to multiple cities, school districts and counties since 1990, according to the economic impact report.

The development was estimated to have a $9.84 billion economic impact on the region in 2023 alone.

For a place like Roanoke, that impact can be seen in its daytime population. The city’s Economic Development Manager Siale Langi said the AllianceTexas development has helped increase the city’s daytime population to 60,000 people a day. Roanoke’s residential population was estimated at 10,798 in 2023, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The increase in daytime population can mean an increase in customers for local businesses in the city, Langi said.

What’s next?

Heading into 2025, the airport still has some pre-existing office and hangar space available for leasing, Burton said. The airport also has about 500 acres of land nearby that’s available for development.

Embraer, a commercial jets manufacturer, announced it was expanding to the airport with a new service center in October 2024. The company is expected to begin operations in 2025 within a pre-existing facility, while a new facility is expected to finish construction in 2027. Embraer is expected to bring 250 new aviation jobs to the area.

AllianceTexas wants to continue attracting companies that can take advantage and benefit from the development’s infrastructure, Burton said.

Burton and Childs agreed that it was important to maintain the infrastructure of the airport and surrounding area while attracting new companies to the area.

In paraphrasing AllianceTexas founder H. Ross Perot Sr., Childs said the key to a successful business was to run it with the same vigor and enthusiasm as a 30-year-old.

“As long as we’re able to maintain that level of enthusiasm, not just within Hillwood but also the area [and] the communities, it’ll fulfill everything,” Childs said.

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Mike Berry remembers trying to convince prospective clients that the swath of wheat field before them would someday be a bustling economic hub anchored by an industrial airport. 

Sure, there were benefits that came with developing the first speculative project of its kind on a stretch of land north of Fort Worth—for Berry and his boss, Ross Perot Jr. Their vision for what would become Hillwood’s AllianceTexas development allowed them to dream beyond the bounds of what had been done before. But with creativity came the challenges of building a spec project with no committed tenants.   

“We didn’t have a user who was already signed up to operate at the airport,” Berry recalls. “That made it even more challenging, because we had to create demand with a project that really no one had ever seen before.” 

Fast forward 35 years, and the vision that was once sketched in masterplan documents and in renderings has become 58 million square feet of office, retail, and industrial space. It has resulted in the onboarding of 574 companies and is responsible for 66,198 direct jobs.

In total, Hillwood’s 27,000-acre development has generated an estimated $120 billion in cumulative economic impact, including $9.8 billion last year alone. 

Berry and Perot were fraternity brothers at Vanderbilt University. Perot was Sigma Alpha Epsilon president while Berry was the social chairman. “So I often tell people that I was the guy who got the fraternity in trouble, and Ross was the guy who got us out of trouble,” Berry says. They were close in college and then went separate ways afterward.

Berry pursued graduate school, followed by a career with Woodbine Development. Perot co-piloted the first around-the-world helicopter flight, served for eight years in the U.S. Air Force, and then began looking at land with his father, Ross Perot Sr. 

The two former frat brothers eventually reconnected, and Perot Jr. began talking with Berry about what AllianceTexas could become. It was a conversation that spanned months but eventually ended with Berry coming on board—and he hasn’t looked back since. “He’s a great salesman, by the way,” Berry says of Perot. “And he still is one of the best salesmen I’ve ever known.”   

Since the Fort Worth Alliance Airport—now Perot Field—opened in 1989 as the world’s first industrial airport, AllianceTexas has evolved to host an intermodal facility, to become a data center hub, and to be known for hosting innovative enterprises like commercial drone delivery service Wing and Gatik, which provides autonomous middle mile delivery services.  

AllianceTexas has also become a center of innovation for Hillwood itself. “Almost every idea that we have at Hillwood was incubated here at Alliance originally,” Berry says. “It’s a great place to test new ideas.” 

D CEO sat down with Berry to look back on AllianceTexas’ 35-year impact and what’s ahead.

NOTE: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

D CEO: Thinking back to when you and Ross were launching Alliance, what were those early days like? What were your initial expectations, and how did theyalign with what Alliance has become? 

BERRY: “Everything that we did in the early days we were pioneering. If you think about the structure of the deal itself, being a public-private partnership between the FAA, the City of Fort Worth, and Hillwood, that had not been done in that sort of structure anywhere in the country—certainly for an airport project. The idea of building an industrial airport was also pioneering, because there was no such thing in the FAA handbook as an industrial airport. It didn’t exist as a category. We had to do a lot of education, not just with the FAA, but also with the local community and the local stakeholders as to what it really was. 

“And I think that the bigger thing was that it was a speculative project. We weren’t building it for a client. We didn’t have a user who was already signed up to operate at the airport. That made it even more challenging, because we had to create demand with a project that no one had ever seen before. 

“Everything was new, which I think at the end of the day was our biggest blessing. Because we really weren’t working off of any benchmarks, it allowed us to sort of think out of the box and be maybe more creative than if you were doing project No. 30 in a long line of projects.

“And we were young, which was also, I think, a huge benefit. We didn’t have a whole lot of experience to fall back on. We also had Ross Perot Sr. around a lot, who would encourage us to think and act that way, basically not to be concerned about making mistakes and to really sort of think about every day as if you’re climbing a new mountain. 

“So, that was the environment that we were in, but it was pretty lonely in those early years. We were building a big runway, and we would bring a lot of people out here, and they’d look at it, and they’d look at literally thousands of acres of undeveloped farmland and ranch land around it. And people had a hard time visualizing what the future might look like, even though we had great, beautiful renderings and master plans and site plans, and we had a lot of paper to sell off of, we didn’t have a lot of verticality. But it was fun. We learned a lot, and I think where we are today has a lot to do with the fact that we went through those periods of having to create things from scratch.”

D CEO: What were some of the key elements of Alliance that have been critical to its success?

BERRY: “The infrastructure that we had in place then and have continued to evolve over time has been the backbone of our success, with the airport being the centerpiece of infrastructure. And then you think about building all of the highway improvements that we have over the years, starting with State Highway 170 and how that allowed us to be connected back to DFW airport. And then you think about the development with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway of the intermodal hub, which really put us on the map as a strategic inland port in the center of North America, and it connected us to Asia through the West Coast ports and allowed all this freight that was flowing from Asia into the U.S. market to come seamlessly into the center of the country and land here at Alliance.

“You start to stack those big pieces of infrastructure together, and it was a unique operating environment for a lot of different businesses, when you could have that sort of transportation and infrastructure integration in one place. On top of that, we put in very robust water, power, fiber systems through the entire development, and continued to even position ourselves as a more complete sort of one-stop shop. 

“And then we layered on some unique economic programs. The Foreign Trade Zone allows products to come in from outside the country and remain inside the trade zone duty-free while they’re here. That was an element that helped us attract some people who were doing international commerce and freight movement. We had the Freeport inventory tax exemption, which allowed tax exemption on inventory that moves through the state of Texas in 175 days or less. 

“The other thing that made us unique is our land base—the zoning was so flexible. Basically, we put this blanket zoning over 10,000 acres of land that would accommodate the needs of any type of company, from a distribution center to a manufacturing center to a data center to an office need to an aviation and aircraft hangar to an air freight and air cargo…everything in all of those categories we could accommodate without any heavy lifting, without any zoning changes or public entitlement work. So it kind of set the table for anything to happen. 

“Additionally, we were very flexible. We were trying to do anything we could to attract the early days of industry and business to Alliance. So we would try to accommodate any sort of deal structure that a company would need. If they needed a building built for them and they wanted to lease it, we would do that. If they wanted to buy their own land and own their own building, we would do that. If they wanted ground lease or some other unique structure, we would do that.

“Lastly, it was room for growth. Ross would always tell clients, and still does, ‘I challenge you to outgrow us.’ It was our goal to be a place where any of our early customers—and even to this day—we would create an environment where they could always know that they could grow and expand here at Alliance.

“All those things put together were things that made us unique and attractive to a lot of different businesses.” 

D CEO: As you look back, what are you most proud of when it comes to Alliance and your leadership at Hillwood? 

BERRY: “I think the thing that I’m most proud of is the fact that we built something that will last way beyond my lifetime. The assets that are on the ground and the things that are happening inside those buildings, whether they be restaurants or large manufacturing plants, are going to have an impact on the local, the regional, and the larger part of the economy for a long time.

“But within that, if I go out to lunch at Alliance, at one of the restaurants, you walk in and you see people working in the restaurant, you see people there eating, and you think back—maybe three or four or 10 years ago, or maybe even a year ago, that was just a piece of land. Nothing was going on, and all of a sudden there’s this economic activity. People have jobs, people have places to go. People are engaging. 

“That, to me, is the most satisfying part of what we do: creating a micro economy out of what was once a piece of raw land and knowing that that will continue to churn for years and years ahead. There’s not a whole lot of careers where that you can have that sort of impact. And we’re not doing it at a small scale—we’re doing it at s giant scale. I mean, 27,000 Acres, 66,000 jobs created, 60 million square feet of space on the ground and a lot more to go. Literally tens of millions of square feet left. 

“I don’t step back and sort of look at it that way very often, but when I do, that’s what I’m most proud of, and that’s what is the most fun part of what we do. We’re constantly creating economic activity. We’re creating jobs for people. We’re creating commerce. We’re creating community in an area where it didn’t exist before.”

D CEO: What’s in store, short term and long term, for the future of Alliance?

BERRY: “We’re pretty bullish right now, quite frankly. In terms of immediate things in the pipeline, we just launched another million-square-foot industrial building. We’ve got two more on the design path that we want to have in position to go forward. We’re trying to start two more multifamily projects.

“And another thing that’s really exploding right now is our retail activity. We’ve reached a point of what I would call residential rooftop critical mass, where now all of the retailers—the grocers, the big box retailers, the small shop retailers, all of the service providers, the healthcare, the medical, the doctors—everybody sees the growth, and they want to be in position to serve both today’s market and the future market.

“We’re really overwhelmed with retail demand right now, and we’re trying to expand our team. We just brought in a new leader of retail development, and we’re trying to build a team so we can develop and handle the growth of retail. That’s a huge growth opportunity for us that we hadn’t really seen before. 

“Another area that we’re trying to grab onto is this north-south growth that’s occurring between Mexico and the U.S. There’s huge volume of freight movement—more so than we’ve seen in the past—that’s beginning to occur between Mexico and Texas, and on into the U.S. A lot of it is because of this nearshoring and onshoring that’s been occurring, and a lot of the manufacturing expansions happening in Mexico, and that’s creating a need for more goods to be pushed up and down, north and south. 

“We participated in the east-west trade global trade market, but really this north-south movement is much bigger than I’ve seen in my whole career, and we’re well positioned to be sort of a giant catcher’s net of a lot of that activity. And we’re really trying to position ourselves to be strategic about that and put in place the next generation of infrastructure to be the center of activity for at least the Texas portion of the north-south trade corridor that’s evolving.

“We’re also seeing a lot of demand in data centers; we’re trying to capture some of that. There’s a lot going on. We’re pretty excited. anytime you’re in a market like DFW, with the growth that we’re experiencing, and more than 300 people a day moving into North Texas, that creates a lot of direct and indirect demand that we want to take advantage of.”