From San Francisco Business Times
Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW) could open a massive operations center in North Dallas, continuing the San Francisco brokerage firm’s long-running love affair with the Lone Star State.
“We’re very interested in the Dallas area for future growth and have signed a lease in the Westlake area that can accommodate up to 500 employees,” Schwab spokeswoman Sarah Bulgatz told the Dallas Business Journal. She declined to comment further.
Schwab is in the midst of bringing up to 1,200 jobs to an expanded facility in Austin and a new operations center in El Paso.
Schwab’s enthusiasm for Texas, as well as Denver and Phoenix, has raised concerns in its hometown that the iconic company’s headquarters could one day leave San Francisco.
CEO Walt Bettinger sought to allay such concerns in an interview last June with the San Francisco Business Times.
“The Bay Area has enormous advantages for a business that has been driven by innovation and disruption on behalf of the consumer for 40 years,” Bettinger said. “We enjoy, and believe it’s been in the best interest of our clients, to have our headquarters in the middle of this area of tremendous innovation, creativity, technology and disruption.
“What probably makes less sense are some of those jobs less focused in those areas being in the Bay Area,” Bettinger added.
Schwab’s planned corporate campus in Dallas is adjacent to Circle T Ranch, a 2,500-acre mixed-use, master-planned development in Westlake.
The financial services company is expected to buy 74 acres of land adjacent to the Circle T Ranch from Hillwood by the end of the year, according to real estate sources.
The site could potentially hold a lot more workers than the 500 that Schwab has confirmed. In all, Charles Schwab could build a five- to six-building campus totaling 1.2 million square feet of space in a multi-phase development, according to numerous real estate sources. The firm has been circling North Texas for more than a year as Charles Schwab targeted the Lone Star state as a prime spot for relocating a significant number of San Francisco-based jobs.
It’s not surprising a financial services company would want to make a major move to North Dallas, said David Berzina, executive vice president of economic development for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.
“We have over 400,000 students enrolled in the Metroplex and we’re graduating more than 40,000 students a year,” said Berzina, who said he had no first-hand knowledge of the Charles Schwab deal.
“Financial institutions like Fidelity and Charles Schwab are looking for college graduates and think the Metroplex is an educational magnet with the growth of the University of North Texas, Texas Christian University, the University of Texas at Dallas and at Arlington and others,” he added.
