By Mike Albanese
Special Contributor
Where there is smoke, there is fire: We had heard for months that a big Goldman Sachs move was imminent for Dallas, was going to be downtown, and was going to bring in thousands of well-paying jobs for house-buying employees.
Now we know: On Wednesday, the Dallas City Council voted to give the global financial institution more than $18 million in economic incentives to bring 5,000 jobs to Dallas (2,500 of which are already here) and construct an 800,000-square-foot office tower, part of Hunt Realty’s 11-acre North End development located between Victory Park and Uptown. The office project will be at 2323 North Field St. next to the Perot Museum.
The Dallas City Council overwhelmingly supported the incentives, never balking at the price. Well, except for District 14’s Paul Ridley.
“This is exactly the kind of company I think we should be investing in,” said council member Cara Mendelsohn. “To me this is an investment that makes sense.”
Council member Tennell Atkins said that giving Goldman Sachs support will build for the city’s future. “We are not giving away the store,” Atkins said. “We are trying to sell Dallas.”
Still, council member Paul Ridley questioned offering the global financial firm millions in public funding.
Goldman was understandably tight-lipped regarding a potential move to Dallas, as we tried to scout for clues earlier this month. The real estate community was, and is, ecstatic. Many have long believed that Goldman could well be the first of many New York City-based financial firms to make the move here.
“Dallas is always on the radar,” said Rogers Healy, owner and CEO of Rogers Healy Companies.
Healy said he has heard rumblings of the New York-based Goldman Sachs moving to Dallas “for a while.”
While noting Dallas’ downtown needs work, its central location and affordability are draws for large corporations.
Although Dallas is gaining notoriety for being one the hottest real estate markets in the nation — home prices up 13.1 percent annually in April to $440,000 and homes selling after 15 days — Healy said Dallas is becoming a hot spot for a key demographic: Millennials.
Healy added Millennials are moving to Dallas more than any city in the nation, and “they’re moving here to call it home.”
He added while the demographic historically moves to Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, lower home prices and a stronger job market give Dallas “10 years or more” of runway in the housing market.
Healy, however, said one of the biggest issues with a potential move, and Goldman Sachs’ 43,000 employees, is parking, especially downtown. He said downtown currently doesn’t have the bandwidth to withstand that influx, especially with heavy traffic already in the Uptown and Oak Lawn neighborhoods.
According to Bloomberg, all Goldman Sachs says at this point is the bank continues “to grow our presence in the Dallas area, but cannot comment at this time on our future expansion plans.”
But it’s no secret that Goldman, and many financial giants, are looking to move at least part of their operations from NYC. Other finance firms, including Charles Schwab Corp. and Vanguard Group Inc., have been drawn to North Texas:
The Wall Street titan has been on the hunt for a new office campus in Dallas that may become its largest presence in the US outside of Manhattan, Bloomberg reported a year ago. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon has been seeking to reshape US operations to cut expenses and shift thousands of jobs to cheaper locales.
Candy Evans contributed to this report.
