FORT WORTH — When Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and other business leaders in the community first began discussing how to position Fort Worth as ‘the most vibrant and sustainable city in the United States,’ they envisioned creating an organization that would elevate the North Texas city’s approach to economic development and build long-term prosperity by attracting investment across industries — from aerospace, defense, mobility and logistics to financial services, biotech, life sciences and film production.
In 2023, the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership (Fort Worth EDP) was formed. Since then, and under the leadership of president and CEO Robert Allen, this privately-funded economic development nonprofit has “exceeded every expectation,” securing nearly $10 billion in new capital investment and generating more than 11,000 new jobs across the city, Mayor Parker said yesterday at the Aron Carter Museum of American Art, following Fort Worth EDP’s annual general meeting.
Major investment from the aerospace cluster
Over the last two years alone, American Airlines and Bell have doubled down on their investments in Fort Worth. The former is in the process of investing over $4 billion to double the number gates at its new Terminal F at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and the latter is investing over $600 million in a new manufacturing center to build components for the Bell MV-75 (V-280 Valor), a tiltrotor aircraft that was selected by the United States Army for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program.
Some members of the Fort Worth community assumed that the Bell project was a foregone conclusion because the defense contractor’s headquarters are already in Fort Worth. “Let me assure you, it was not,” Allen said. “It took hours and a large team to beat two other extremely competitive states. Successful economic development is not a given. It is earned.”…