FORT WORTH AT ONE MILLION — BUILDING AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR THE NEXT DECADE

Fort Worth has crossed into a new class of American city. With more than one million residents, it now ranks among the eleven largest cities in the United States and continues to grow at a pace few major cities can match. Its economic record is equally striking: since the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership formed in 2023, the city has secured nearly $10 billion in capital investment and 11,000 new jobs, including major commitments from Bell, Siemens, Wistron, and Embraer, along with two artificial intelligence supercomputing sites. That record earned the Partnership recognition as one of only twenty 2025 Mac Conway Award honorees nationally. Fort Worth is building from considerable strength, and the scale of its success now calls for an economic agenda capable of carrying that momentum across sectors, institutions, and neighborhoods for the decade ahead.

THE MOMENT

Fort Worth’s 2017 economic development strategy helped frame an earlier era of the city’s growth. Over the past nine years, the system responsible for carrying that strategy forward has expanded and become more distributed. The City leads small business development, revitalization, and incentive negotiations; the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership leads outbound business recruitment; three chambers serve distinct business communities; and district organizations bring deep knowledge of the places where growth, investment, and neighborhood change are unfolding.

The geography and substance of the work have changed as well. Four innovation districts are advancing at different stages of maturity, seven Revitalization Target Areas are connecting neighborhood priorities to citywide growth, and major corridors are absorbing new patterns of development and investment. The 2026 Bond Program will direct capital toward neighborhood infrastructure, while the FIFA World Cup will bring new visibility to Fort Worth and the wider region. Each development presents a distinct opportunity, and together they require a framework that connects business recruitment, industry growth, talent, innovation, small business, commercial corridors, and revitalization across the full geography of the city.

A city with this much momentum faces choices that extend well beyond its recruitment pipeline. Fort Worth must distinguish the industries in which it already competes at national scale from emerging opportunities that warrant deeper investment; connect employers with the talent required to sustain growth; clarify what each innovation district needs next; and ensure that new investment strengthens the neighborhoods and business communities that have shaped the city’s identity. The strategy must also give the City and its partners a practical way to coordinate decisions, align resources, measure progress, and adapt as economic conditions change.

THE CIVIC SOLUTION

CivicSol is proud to partner with the City of Fort Worth to create its next Economic Development Strategic Plan. Our team will combine rigorous market analysis, place-based research, extensive engagement, and implementation planning to help Fort Worth make the choices its next decade requires. The work will establish a clear view of the city’s competitive position, identify the opportunities with the greatest potential, and build the institutional alignment needed to turn a shared direction into sustained results.

The engagement includes:

• A citywide economic and institutional assessment that measures progress since the 2017 strategy and maps how Fort Worth’s economic development partners work together today.

• Peer-city benchmarking and an integrated analysis of industry clusters, emerging sectors, workforce and talent, commercial real estate, land use, corridors, small business, and entrepreneurship.

• A maturity framework for Fort Worth’s four innovation districts, paired with a place-based evaluation of the city’s seven Revitalization Target Areas.

• Structured engagement with elected leaders, employers, economic development partners, anchor institutions, small businesses, residents, and community organizations throughout Fort Worth.

• A strategic framework connecting target industries, business retention and expansion, innovation, revitalization, entrepreneurship, workforce, talent, and the tools required to advance those priorities.

• An implementation roadmap, Year One Work Plan, and performance framework that define ownership, partner roles, resource needs, early actions, and the measures Fort Worth will use to track progress over time.

THE IMPACT

The final plan will give Fort Worth a unified economic development agenda calibrated to the realities of a one-million-resident city. It will sharpen the choices that can strengthen Fort Worth’s national position, connect major investments to workforce and place, guide the continued development of innovation districts and commercial corridors, and bring revitalization into the center of the city’s growth strategy.

The work will also establish the operating structure behind the strategy, with clear responsibilities, a shared cadence of implementation, and measures that allow the City and its partners to see where progress is taking hold and where the work must adjust. Fort Worth has already demonstrated its ability to attract people, companies, and investment at an extraordinary scale. This partnership will help convert that momentum into a durable economic framework for the next decade, shaped with Fort Worth and built to advance alongside the city as it continues to grow.

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