Much of the meeting focused on attracting large employers, the need for more office space and the North Texas Enterprise Center, which is Frisco’s business incubator. With each discussion item, the FEDC board of directors and Council considered strategies to approach each area.
Fortune 100 company
Dan Bollner, FEDC board vice chairman, said the Council’s priority to attract a Fortune 100 employer to the city is directly related to the FEDC’s work and is, therefore, something the FEDC would want to focus on.
Several Council members asked what it would take to bring a Fortune 100 employer to Frisco, to which board members responded that the FEDC is ready to be aggressive with economic incentives.
“We proved that with Toyota,” FEDC board member David Porter said. “We were ready to throw whatever was necessary and would make fiscal sense, and we did. We gave it our best shot.”Bollner said sometimes being aggressive financially will not always attract large employers.
“There are things we have to look at that is a form of being aggressive that isn’t always a dollar sign,” he said.
One of the ways the FEDC has looked outside of economic incentives is to focus efforts on advertising Frisco more on a national and international platform, FEDC board member David Prince said.
Office space
The lack of class B office space, or average quality and average rent range office space, could be keeping some employers from moving to Frisco, council member Jeff Cheney said.
Porter said the high land costs in Frisco discourage some class B office developers from building in the city. The FEDC, however, could work on creating an incentive package for those developers to help offset the cost of development, he said.
FEDC President Jim Gandy said Frisco also currently lacks office buildings with walkable amenities, such as restaurants or shopping, that employers want. However, many of the offices within the $5 Billion Mile developments will be within mixed-use developments with those amenities, he said.
NTEC
Though NTEC Excecutice Director John Miller presented information on the companies and jobs created through NTEC, council and board members raised concerns about whether NTEC is a successful organization.
Cheney said he rarely hears promotions about NTEC at public events.
“NTEC has been around for a decade or more, and we’ve invested all this money into it, we built the building, we talk about it once a year and we don’t talk about it the rest of the year,” Cheney said. “Based on the graphs and the info we received from our board members, we’re starting to see successes, but we’re still not talking about it. We’re still not giving it attention.”
FEDC board member said one issue with NTEC is that the city and FEDC never defined a way to measure its success.
“When is it successful?” he said. “When we create 100 jobs, 200 jobs? When does the taxpayer get a return on its investment?”
Council member Bob Allen said both the board and Council should not forget how NTEC has helped with job creation, pointing out that it falls in line with FEDC's priorities.
“I think job creation is an important part of this city’s development,” he said.
Frisco Mayor Maher Maso said the FEDC should revisit a plan for NTEC to determine its role in the future.
