alliancetexas-all-json

[{“id”:12618,”date”:”2025-01-07″,”image”:{“thumbnail”:”0b5a6080-4ca7-499d-a8c6-a49aa38e88b5.jpg”,”original”:”3fbdfcb1-7247-4bb8-acf9-ffd8748e1578.jpg”,”optimized”:”43d67efc-9627-4da8-b045-221d00ba4193.jpg”},”featured”:true,”title”:”Torc Signs Lease Agreement for New Autonomous Truck Hub in Dallas-Fort Worth Area for Testing and Commercial Operations”},[{“id”:12618,”date”:”2025-01-07″,”image”:{“thumbnail”:”0b5a6080-4ca7-499d-a8c6-a49aa38e88b5.jpg”,”original”:”3fbdfcb1-7247-4bb8-acf9-ffd8748e1578.jpg”,”optimized”:”43d67efc-9627-4da8-b045-221d00ba4193.jpg”},”details”:[{“language”:”English – US”,”languageCode”:”en-US”,”title”:”Torc Signs Lease Agreement for New Autonomous Truck Hub in Dallas-Fort Worth Area for Testing and Commercial Operations”,”article”:”

New space in AllianceTexas will support the growth and development of Torc’s autonomous driving product.<\/p>\n

Torc, an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG and a pioneer in commercializing self-driving vehicle technology, today announced the company has signed a leasing agreement for a facility located in Hillwood’s AllianceTexas development that will serve as Torc’s autonomous truck hub in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The new location will be a hub for Torc’s autonomous testing efforts, customer freight pilots, and future commercialization slated for 2027.<\/p>\n

The site will feature a customer experience center, offices, and dedicated control centers for fleet management and operations. Well into productization, Torc’s expansion in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area positions the company for the next phase of autonomous driving and provides a strategic advantage due to its proximity to a major freight route between Dallas and Laredo, Texas, on Interstate 35. Laredo is the largest economic port of entry in the US, with more than 15,000 truck crossings per day and $320B in total trade last year<\/a>, opening up a prime opportunity for Torc’s growth.<\/p>\n

“Establishing our presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a key region for the future of autonomous trucking, is a critical milestone for Torc,” commented Peter Vaughan Schmidt, CEO. “This new hub will enable us to better serve our current and future customers, enhance our operational capabilities, and drive forward the adoption of autonomous technology in the logistics industry. As we work toward commercialization, the new hub will give us access to talent, resources and routes that we didn’t previously have, and we’re excited about the growth opportunities ahead.”<\/p>\n

“Opening our Dallas Fort Worth hub is a testament to the incredible progress Torc has made. This new hub not only expands our operational footprint but also reinforces our commitment to advancing autonomous technology,” said Andrew Culhane, Chief Commercial Officer for Torc. “This comes on the heels of the successful product acceptance test validation of our autonomous trucks without a driver in a multi-lane, closed-course, highway-speed environment, further showcasing our dedication to the highest safety and product maturity standards. As we continue through the productization phase of our development cycle, we are excited about the future and the opportunities this new hub opens up.”<\/p>\n

“We are excited to welcome Torc to AllianceTexas. This collaboration highlights Hillwood’s commitment to fostering mobility innovation and building a more resilient supply chain ecosystem with industry-leading technology, reliable infrastructure, and forward-thinking customers,” said Ian Kinne, Director of Logistics Innovation at Hillwood. “The strategic location of this hub along the critical freight corridor of Interstate 35 is a testament to some of the unique advantages of AllianceTexas. Torc’s presence here will further drive innovation, enhance connectivity, and provide significant value to our customers as we work toward a more efficient and connected future in logistics.”<\/p>\n

The hub will be located at 13119 Old Denton Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76177, and Torc plans to start occupying the new space early this year. The new site includes a 17-acre facility and 22,000 square feet of office space. The facility will be built out over the first half of 2025, ensuring it complies with the standards required for autonomous vehicle operations.<\/p>\n

Announced in late 2024, Torc<\/a> is also expanding its workforce in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area, where it plans to hire more than 100 positions in the coming months.<\/p>\n

About Torc Robotics  <\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

Torc Robotics, headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia, is an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG, a global leader and pioneer in trucking. Founded in 2005 at the birth of the self-driving vehicle revolution, Torc has nearly 20 years of experience in pioneering safety-critical, self-driving applications. Torc offers a complete self-driving vehicle software and integration solution and is currently focusing on commercializing autonomous trucks for long-haul applications in the U.S.  <\/span>In addition to its Blacksburg headquarters and engineering offices in Austin, Texas, and Montreal, Canada, Torc has a fleet operations facility in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas, to support the company’s productization and commercialization efforts, as well as a presence in Ann Arbor, MI, to take advantage of the autonomous and automotive talent base in that region. Torc’s purpose is driving the future of freight with autonomous technology. As the world’s leading autonomous trucking solution, we empower exceptional employees, deliver a focused, hub-to-hub autonomous truck product, and provide our customers with the safest, most reliable, and cost-efficient solution to the market.  <\/span><\/p>\n

About AllianceTexas<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>Developed by Hillwood, AllianceTexas is an unparalleled regional success story that has transformed the North Texas economy and connected the area to global industry. Consisting of 27,000 acres, the development is anchored by the world’s first dedicated industrial airport, Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW), and hosts one of the nation’s premier intermodal hubs. Today, AllianceTexas is home to 575 companies that have created more than 66,000 direct jobs and have approximately 58 million square feet of developed commercial real estate assets. The development’s cumulative impact since 1989 is an estimated $120 billion for the North Texas region. For additional information, please visit <\/span>www.alliancetexas.com<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone (MIZ) spans the 27,000-acre industrial-focused, public-private ecosystem that brings policymakers and industry innovators together to propel surface and air mobility forward. By leveraging its one-of-a-kind infrastructure, the MIZ offers unparalleled resources to comprehensively scale and commercialize the latest logistics and mobility technologies. For more information on the AllianceTexas MIZ and how your organization can be part of this industry-shaping environment, visit <\/span>www.alliancetexasmiz.com<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>“}]}],{“id”:12616,”author”:”Kate Marijolovic”,”source”:”Fort Worth Star-Telegram”,”date”:”2024-12-20″,”image”:{“thumbnail”:”f0a94ee1-f0dd-47ba-8ca6-39192e4b2b4e.jpg”,”original”:”990b868b-3fc4-4e03-bf45-362dffb51e26.jpg”,”optimized”:”9bd61377-07f6-4489-9275-43cd5ced5d09.jpg”},”featured”:true,”title”:”Alliance, 35 years later: How Ross Perot Jr.\u2019s \u2018grand vision\u2019 changed Fort Worth forever”},[{“id”:12616,”author”:”Kate Marijolovic”,”source”:”Fort Worth Star-Telegram”,”date”:”2024-12-20″,”image”:{“thumbnail”:”f0a94ee1-f0dd-47ba-8ca6-39192e4b2b4e.jpg”,”original”:”990b868b-3fc4-4e03-bf45-362dffb51e26.jpg”,”optimized”:”9bd61377-07f6-4489-9275-43cd5ced5d09.jpg”},”details”:[{“language”:”English – US”,”languageCode”:”en-US”,”title”:”Alliance, 35 years later: How Ross Perot Jr.\u2019s \u2018grand vision\u2019 changed Fort Worth forever”,”article”:”

Thirty-five years after starting AllianceTexas, the 27,000-acre development that defines the far north side of Fort Worth, Ross Perot Jr. has only one regret. “I’d buy a lot more land,” he said. Visiting Alliance today, it’s hard to visualize what this vast corridor along Interstate 35W looked like before the landscape was filled with thousands of homes, massive industrial warehouses, sprawling corporate campuses, a bustling industrial airport and, yes, Fort Worth’s first H-E-B. When Perot started buying up property in the 1980s, most of the land was farms, ranches or empty prairie.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Alliance has become a regional powerhouse for economic development, attracting hundreds of businesses. At least 575 companies operate here, many of them familiar household names like Amazon, Walmart and LG Electronics. Hillwood, the Perot-owned development company, estimates the project has had a $119.8 billion economic impact on North Texas since its inception.<\/p>\n

But Alliance’s success wasn’t always certain. “Fort Worth could be mortgaging its future for a lemon,” the Star-Telegram wrote in April 1989, nine months before the opening of the development’s cornerstone, Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport, funded mostly by the FAA. “The federal government might have spent $31 million on one of the finest parking lots to ever grace a cow pasture.”<\/p>\n

Perot was in his 20s when he began buying land for Alliance. For the son of Texas businessman and one-time presidential candidate, H. Ross Perot Sr., the development grew into a legacy-defining project. Today, Perot Jr. is the chairman of Hillwood, which develops properties across the globe.<\/p>\n

Willed into existence by Perot, Alliance’s growth has been shepherded by Hillwood’s president, Mike Berry. After 35 years, it’s clear their gamble on once-rural property has paid off. “We thought we had a lot of land when we got started,” Perot said, “but Mike and I sit around now and go, ‘Why didn’t we buy all this land next to us?’ It is so hard to do when we had thousands of acres of land and no one’s showing up, but man, I wish I’d bought more.” Perhaps even more remarkable than Alliance’s success is that it’s nowhere close to finished — only about two-thirds of it has been developed.<\/p>\n

‘Eagles don’t flock’ <\/strong><\/p>\n

Decorated with modern, bright white paneling and dark wood, the lobby of Hillwood’s downtown Fort Worth office feels like stepping onto a perfectly staged movie set. Four backlit photos of Alliance and other Hillwood properties adorn the left wall, each displayed like a trophy. Above a pair of matching gray chairs by the glass entry doors is a quote from Ross Perot Sr. emblazoned on the wall: “Eagles don’t flock, you have to find them one at a time.” Next to it hangs a photo of father and son.<\/p>\n

Perot bought the property that would become Alliance in 1985.<\/p>\n

At the time, similar land around Dallas was significantly more expensive. Perot said many families that sold him their ranches were the first generation to do so, unlike in Dallas, where property had been bought and sold dozens of times. Perot Field — then called Fort Worth Alliance Airport — opened on Dec. 14, 1989, with a celebrating crowd of 300 to watch an American Airlines Boeing 757 be the first to land on the freshly paved runway. Perot, an avid aviator himself, rode in the cockpit.<\/p>\n

Confronted by a need for more airport capacity in the Metroplex, the Federal Aviation Administration asked Perot to donate land for an airport. He agreed, but his aviation contacts told him what the region really needed was an industrial airport, not general aviation. U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright of Fort Worth pushed federal dollars for the project through Congress.<\/p>\n

The late 1980s were tough times in Texas, where an oil bust had devastated the economy. Perot said he couldn’t get any aviation clients. That changed on June 7, 1989, when American Airlines Chairman Robert Crandall announced in City Hall that the carrier would invest over $400 million in a maintenance facility at the new airport, creating 4,500 jobs. It was such big news that NBC 5 preempted its morning soap opera “Generations” to broadcast the event live.<\/p>\n

The Star-Telegram reported that Crandall’s announcement “virtually assured the success of Ross Perot Jr.’s grand vision to build the United States’ first airport dedicated to industrial use.”<\/p>\n

At the time, Perot predicted that 20,000 to 30,000 people could be working at the airport in 20 or 30 years. It wasn’t meant to be with American; the carrier closed the maintenance center in 2012. But the overall Alliance development kickstarted by the airline has created over 66,000 direct jobs since then, according to Hillwood. Mike Berry — Perot’s longtime partner who is now president of Hillwood — said he was brought onto the Alliance project at its start to be a dealmaker and attract companies. He said people thought Alliance was a crazy idea at first. Many didn’t understand the opportunities that access to an industrial airport would provide. “We had to sell our ass off every day,” Berry said. “Still do, but it was different back then.”<\/p>\n

BNSF Railway opened an intermodal hub a few miles away from the airport in 1994, changing plans for Alliance. Transport became the name of the game.<\/p>\n

“Before Santa Fe came in, we really had no idea what we could do,” Berry told the Star-Telegram in April 1996. Perot Field and BNSF’s rail hub laid the groundwork for the development’s future role as a key mobility hub and inland port. The airport alone moved 2.5 billion pounds of cargo in 2023. The airport, railroad and access to Interstate 35 are all within a roughly two mile radius of each other. In 1994, FedEx broke ground on a $300 million sorting hub at the airport that officials expected to employ at least 600 workers.<\/p>\n

Once major brands began making deals with Hillwood for industrial space and warehouses in Alliance, development snowballed. As the number of people working in Alliance grew, Hillwood expanded into home building. Over 14,600 homes have been built in Alliance since 1990.<\/p>\n

‘A very unique perspective’ <\/strong><\/p>\n

While luck might’ve helped, Alliance’s success is no accident. Perot and Berry have aggressively pursued new deals for decades, and the Alliance team prides itself on finding creative solutions for clients’ needs. Today, Hillwood has expanded into multi-family housing and has built retail properties, including a shopping center home to Tarrant County’s first H-E-B, to support the burgeoning population.<\/p>\n

The company offers Alliance clients myriad services that cater to almost every need a business could have. That includes maintenance, such as landscaping and property management, and core components of new developments, like organizing public-private partnerships and building entertainment complexes. The company offers its expertise on foreign trade zones, workforce development and oil and gas.<\/p>\n

Over the decades, Alliance has weathered just about every economic storm, from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’ve seen over this whole time, every possible recession, real estate cycle, pandemic, great financial crash,” Berry said. “I mean, almost any movie you want to see, we’ve seen the movie, and I think that gives you a very unique perspective.” Berry said one deal he wished had worked out was with Intel. The computer part maker explored building a manufacturing facility in Alliance in the mid-1990s, but the U.S. semiconductor market tanked, forcing it to halt plans in 1998. “Many deals have challenges,” Berry said. When asked about his dream deal for Alliance, Berry said he always hoped to bring a four-year university to the development. He said Hillwood explored deals, but nothing ever solidified. Tarrant County College operates a technical program at Perot Field. “It’s like building the city. You know, we ought to have every little bit of everything, quite frankly. We’re set up for everything,” Berry said.<\/p>\n

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