New York-based financial giant Goldman Sachs will put 5,000 workers in an office campus to be built just north of downtown Dallas.
The City Council voted Wednesday to give Goldman Sachs and Dallas’ Hunt Realty more than $18 million in economic incentives to build the office project at 2323 North Field St. next to the Perot Museum.
The City Council overwhelmingly supported the incentives.
“This is exactly the kind of company I think we should be investing in,” said council member Cara Mendelsohn. “To me this is an investment that makes sense.”
Council member Tennell Atkins said that giving Goldman Sachs support will build for the city’s future. “We are not giving away the store,” Atkins said. “We are trying to sell Dallas.”
Still, council member Paul Ridley questioned offering the global financial firm millions in public funding.
“I do not see the need for public support for a wealthy public corporation that is highly capitalized and does not need this money to decide where they are going to locate their offices,” said Ridley, who ultimately voted for the proposal.
The Goldman Sachs campus would be part of Hunt Realty’s 11-acre North End development located between Victory Park and Uptown.
Plans for the mixed-use project include offices, residential and hotel towers and retail space just north of Woodall Rodgers Freeway. The new buildings will be constructed around a 1.5-acre park.
Goldman Sach’s more than 800,000-square-foot office will anchor the project.
The incentives okayed by the city are a combination of economic grants and tax abatements. The City Council agreed to give Goldman Sachs $4.375 million in grants and property and business tax abatements valued at $13.644 million.
Goldman Sachs currently employs about 2,500 full-time permanent employees in Dallas, with most of them working in the Trammell Crow Center on Ross Avenue.
“It’s 5,000 jobs — 2,500 retained here in the city and another 2,500 added,” said Robin Bentley, director of Dallas’ office of economic development.
Bentley said the city grant support works out to about $800 per employee, “which is less than we have offered on similar deals.”
The workers will have an average annual base wage of at least $90,000.
“The types of jobs we are looking at are the full spectrum of headquarters services,” Bentley said. “All of the Goldman Sachs divisions of business will be represented out of the Dallas office.”
Goldman Sachs also considered Salt Lake City, Atlanta and South Florida for the office, according to the city’s economic development department. North Texas is already Goldman Sachs’ largest employment outside of New York.
The new office would be completed “no later than December 31, 2027.”
Along with job creation, the city is asking Goldman Sachs to “partner” with Paul Quinn College, the University of Texas at Dallas and Dallas College to create workforce programs for internships and apprenticeships.
Council member Gay Donnell Willis said the city has to support projects like the new Goldman Sachs office.
“The notion of sitting back on our heels in a competitive world will make Dallas a loser,” she said. “The competition is so ready to step in and take projects away from us. Dallas is a winner.”
Goldman Sachs representatives have declined to comment on the planned Dallas office expansion.
The proposed Goldman Sachs office would cost more than $480 million, according to filings with the city. That would make it the most costly real estate project in central Dallas in decades.
The financial firm also has hundreds of workers at an office in Richardson’s Telecom Corridor.
Goldman Sachs’ incentive package is one of the largest Dallas has ever made.
In 2019, California-based transportation firm Uber received more than $9 million in city incentives to bring 3,000 jobs to a new building in Dallas’ Deep Ellum neighborhood.
State, city and county officials approved nearly $36 million in total economic incentives to bring Uber’s office to Dallas. But Uber drastically downsized the Dallas operation during the COVID-19 pandemic and forfeited the millions in support.
Toyota North America received more than $8 million in incentives from Plano to relocate its North American headquarters from California. Toyota also received $40 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund for bringing 3,650 workers to the new headquarters in Plano.
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