CTroyMathis
12-28-2002, 04:08 PM
Great Southwest in need of help
By O.K. Carter
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Pretty much just about everybody figured Angus Wynne II had bitten off more than he and a group of investors could chew when in 1956 they bought the old W.T. Waggoner spread from the deceased rancher's heirs. The ranch sprawled across 5,200 acres of Arlington and Grand Prairie.
Quite a few adjacent property owners clamored the equivalent of "me, too," and Wynne bought their land -- 8,200 acres, including the Waggoner piece, for the future Great Southwest Industrial Park.
Frankly, Wynne almost did go broke before coming up with a money-making mechanism we know as Six Flags Over Texas.
The business park continued to grow long after Wynne was out of the picture. Fast forward 46 years, and Great Southwest in all its various entities provides facilities for more than 3,000 companies and more than 60,000 workers.
For Arlington and Grand Prairie, the industrial park has been a basket of plenty, endlessly generating prosperity and growth year after year. Best of all, it was built in an era in which no one asked for tax increment districts, tax abatements or outright funding. Run water, electricity and sewer lines to the edge of the district, and the developer did the rest: streets, buildings, infrastructure, all built to heavy-duty industrial standards.
Such a deal. What a long, juicy ride.
City Hall and city schools dropped every new industrial park addition on the tax rolls and watched dollars roll in at minimal expense. Run a patrol car through the district on occasion or maybe fix a sprung water line. A little patch on a street here, replace a street light there.
Unfortunately, benign neglect has a price. Grand Prairie has done a reasonably good job taking care of its piece of Great Southwest, but Arlington really has not.
And it shows. Vacancy in the industrial park might be closing in on record levels. By midyear, the vacancy rate had doubled to almost 14 percent from the previous year, with the trend accelerating. The vacancy rate could now be in the 17- to 20-percent range. Or so knowledgeable brokers -- such as David Dunn, owner of Arlington-based Dunn Commercial -- conclude, if vacant space on which contractual lease payments are still being made until agreements expire is included. An estimated 9 million to 10 million square feet of space now stands empty.
The problem? It's plural: obsolescence, competition, overbuilding, the economic downturn, Arlington's long-standing failure to maintain or upgrade infrastructure and a tax incentive dilemma.
Besides being downright unappealingly shabby in sections, the Arlington section of the park doesn't offer the much-vaunted triple freeport tax exemption -- a property tax break for short-term inventory. Though the city and county offer the exemption, the school district does not. Its tax load is by far the heaviest of the three.
Though the situation frankly looks glum, there are flickers of hope. The Arlington school district has hired a consultant to help it study the freeport exemption. The idea is that major corporations in the area would basically continue to pay inventory property taxes until a state school-funding adjustment kicks in -- depending on timing, in one or two years.
The city has, with some reluctance, also included a $5.2 million provision for Great Southwest street repairs in an upcoming bond election. It's not nearly enough, but it is a starting point.
If the triple freeport exemption becomes a reality and if infrastructure is spruced up a bit, it would make sense to launch a more intensive marketing effort involving the city, the Chamber of Commerce and Great Southwest investors themselves. The park does, after all, have some strengths. Those include affordability, mid-Metroplex location and quick access to D/FW Airport, rail and interstate transportation.
No one, of course, has more incentive to lease their industrial properties than the investors who own them. But right now they're working against a stacked deck and decades of municipal indifference.
By O.K. Carter
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Pretty much just about everybody figured Angus Wynne II had bitten off more than he and a group of investors could chew when in 1956 they bought the old W.T. Waggoner spread from the deceased rancher's heirs. The ranch sprawled across 5,200 acres of Arlington and Grand Prairie.
Quite a few adjacent property owners clamored the equivalent of "me, too," and Wynne bought their land -- 8,200 acres, including the Waggoner piece, for the future Great Southwest Industrial Park.
Frankly, Wynne almost did go broke before coming up with a money-making mechanism we know as Six Flags Over Texas.
The business park continued to grow long after Wynne was out of the picture. Fast forward 46 years, and Great Southwest in all its various entities provides facilities for more than 3,000 companies and more than 60,000 workers.
For Arlington and Grand Prairie, the industrial park has been a basket of plenty, endlessly generating prosperity and growth year after year. Best of all, it was built in an era in which no one asked for tax increment districts, tax abatements or outright funding. Run water, electricity and sewer lines to the edge of the district, and the developer did the rest: streets, buildings, infrastructure, all built to heavy-duty industrial standards.
Such a deal. What a long, juicy ride.
City Hall and city schools dropped every new industrial park addition on the tax rolls and watched dollars roll in at minimal expense. Run a patrol car through the district on occasion or maybe fix a sprung water line. A little patch on a street here, replace a street light there.
Unfortunately, benign neglect has a price. Grand Prairie has done a reasonably good job taking care of its piece of Great Southwest, but Arlington really has not.
And it shows. Vacancy in the industrial park might be closing in on record levels. By midyear, the vacancy rate had doubled to almost 14 percent from the previous year, with the trend accelerating. The vacancy rate could now be in the 17- to 20-percent range. Or so knowledgeable brokers -- such as David Dunn, owner of Arlington-based Dunn Commercial -- conclude, if vacant space on which contractual lease payments are still being made until agreements expire is included. An estimated 9 million to 10 million square feet of space now stands empty.
The problem? It's plural: obsolescence, competition, overbuilding, the economic downturn, Arlington's long-standing failure to maintain or upgrade infrastructure and a tax incentive dilemma.
Besides being downright unappealingly shabby in sections, the Arlington section of the park doesn't offer the much-vaunted triple freeport tax exemption -- a property tax break for short-term inventory. Though the city and county offer the exemption, the school district does not. Its tax load is by far the heaviest of the three.
Though the situation frankly looks glum, there are flickers of hope. The Arlington school district has hired a consultant to help it study the freeport exemption. The idea is that major corporations in the area would basically continue to pay inventory property taxes until a state school-funding adjustment kicks in -- depending on timing, in one or two years.
The city has, with some reluctance, also included a $5.2 million provision for Great Southwest street repairs in an upcoming bond election. It's not nearly enough, but it is a starting point.
If the triple freeport exemption becomes a reality and if infrastructure is spruced up a bit, it would make sense to launch a more intensive marketing effort involving the city, the Chamber of Commerce and Great Southwest investors themselves. The park does, after all, have some strengths. Those include affordability, mid-Metroplex location and quick access to D/FW Airport, rail and interstate transportation.
No one, of course, has more incentive to lease their industrial properties than the investors who own them. But right now they're working against a stacked deck and decades of municipal indifference.