CBRE Doubles Down On Dallas With 1,000 New Jobs, $42M In New Investment
Commercial real estate giant CBRE will create about 1,000 new North Texas jobs and invest at least $42M into its Dallas headquarters and a new operations center in Richardson.
CBRE, which moved its headquarters from Los Angeles to Dallas in 2020, will spend more than $29M to make way for 460 new jobs at its DFW corporate hub and an additional $13M for the Richardson facility, set to employ about 550, state officials said Thursday. The investment nearly doubles the local workforce of the world's largest commercial real estate services firm.
The announcement follows approval of $6.75M in Texas Enterprise Fund grants for the two projects and comes a week after the Dallas City Council voted to give the property firm $250K to add jobs and build a new headquarters tower in the city’s Uptown neighborhood, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Gov. Greg Abbott credited CBRE’s decision to the state’s workforce and strong business climate, adding in a statement this latest in a long string of California-to-Texas relocations and expansions was further proof of the state’s status as “the national model for economic prosperity."
CBRE went public with plans to move its headquarters to Dallas in October 2020, at that time noting only a small number of its 5,000 California employees would be migrating to Dallas. Instead, it vowed to create jobs. Today, according to the Morning News, it employs about 700 at offices on McKinney Avenue and Park Lane, and it counts more than 3,000 North Texas employees — a 70% jump over the past decade.
State officials said the company’s decision to sink deeper roots in Texas reflected DFW's explosive commercial real estate market. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, it racked up more commercial real estate deals than any other major metro last year, state Rep. Morgan Meyer said, dubbing CBRE's new investment "a harbinger of the immense growth potential of North Texas."
"CBRE's growth in Dallas demonstrates once again that our city is a cutting-edge economic powerhouse," Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said in a statement. "And this deal proves that we are committed to building for an even brighter future.”
Richardson Mayor Paul Volker pointed to his city’s position at the heart of the region’s Telecom Corridor, making it a strategic choice for CBRE’s operations center and more than 500 new workers.
CBRE told Center Square it is deepening its commitment to the area because it “has the most diverse economy in Texas, and one of every three high-tech jobs in Texas is located in DFW.”
CBRE said DFW’s cost of living, nearly 22% below the national large metro average came into play, as did its job market, “one of the most resilient among major U.S. metros during the Covid-19 pandemic, adding 260,200 jobs between May 2020 to May 2021.”
