Rendering courtesy of The Texas A&M University System
A plaza at the center will connect the three buildings of Texas A&M's planned downtown campus in Fort Worth.
With Texas A&M’s announced plans to expand its presence in Fort Worth, it seems all but inevitable that the city will turn a little more maroon.
Of greater significance for the city, Tarrant County, and North Texas overall, however, are the contributions A&M’s new campus will make to the region’s economic and business development landscape.
The tip of that iceberg is how the new campus will help accelerate growth in the relatively underdeveloped southeast quadrant of downtown — alongside Phase 1 of the Convention Center renovation, a new Convention Center hotel on a newly straightened Commerce Street, and the Deco 969 development. The campus will also encourage further growth along Lancaster Avenue and serve as a bridge between downtown and the Near Southside. A vibrant Commerce Street will flow directly from the Bank of America and Wells Fargo towers into the top of South Main. Butler Place will emerge as a far more attractive development opportunity — including a potential corporate headquarters given all that A&M will be doing next door. The new campus will connect its central quad to the Omni’s expanded facilities via a more open Water Gardens.
But the full impact of an “anchor institution” like A&M is far broader. Among Fort Worth’s most pressing needs is increasing its volume of business and corporate activity. Most tangibly, that will reverse our residential versus commercial property taxes. But no less consequential are the jobs it will bring — and the younger residents it will help the city attract and retain.
The distinct vision of Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp and the A&M System Board of Regents for the new campus — with its emphasis on innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship — offers a unique opportunity to advance those goals.
Most obviously, the campus will bring both law students and students from a myriad other disciplines to Fort Worth — who will remain after their studies, given all the city has to offer. Students from the area, meanwhile, will have further educational offerings to keep them here. These graduates, along with those from other higher education institutions with which Fort Worth is blessed, will support the pressing need for a more highly educated workforce.
Compounding the economic impact of the new campus will be the contributions A&M can offer in meeting the region’s R&D and workforce training needs. With its more than $1.1 billion in research expenditures and a commitment to partnering with industry to support commercialization, Texas A&M’s campus will allow Fort Worth to offer companies distinct opportunities for research collaboration. Given lab, research, and office spaces on the campus designed for business co-location, many companies will find that support directly down the hall.
Makerspaces on the campus, as well as facilities for incubators and accelerators, will offer opportunities for startups and early-stage companies as well, and for the entrepreneurs who stand behind them.
Additionally, through state agencies operating within the university’s system — including the Engineering Extension Service — A&M offers non-degree training programs for nearly 150,000 individuals and businesses a year.
All this will help Fort Worth tell a more robust story of itself as a hub for the highest caliber of research and development, workforce training, academic/industry collaboration, and technology commercialization — for Texas and the entire nation.