While suburbs like Prosper and Celina get most of the attention for North Texas’ continued meteoric growth, Fort Worth outpaced every other city in the state last year and has helped Tarrant County catch the eye of institutional investors. 

That pushed its population over 1 million, past Jacksonville, Florida, to make it the 10th most populous city in the U.S. 

That growth has caused commercial real estate companies to increase their investments in Fort Worth and Tarrant County, Crescent Real Estate Senior Vice President of Investments Jeff Dyer said. It’s also produced positive momentum for the area's industrial, office and multifamily markets, according to the latest reports from Colliers. All that growth has brought the area to the attention of institutional investors, who are increasingly requesting to tour assets and sites in Tarrant County, Dyer said. 

"People have executed in other markets, and they look at the demographics here, the trajectory here, some of the sites here that are probably value plays compared to other markets, and they're interested,” Dyer said during Bisnow's Tarrant County State of the Market on July 30 at The Crescent Hotel in Fort Worth. “And I don't think it's going to stop."

Fort Worth’s growth illustrates that the city is somewhere people want to be, and the increasing interest from institutional investors shows it has become a primary market, according to LanCarte Commercial President Sarah LanCarte.

"It is not data centers necessarily, but a lot of suppliers," LanCarte said of who is leasing the warehouse space.

Electronics manufacturing services company Celestica plans to invest $876M to build what Fort Worth officials called a “mega project” to help meet demand for data center infrastructure and advanced technology solutions. The Toronto-based company’s more than 1M SF campus for advanced manufacturing and engineering will be in the AllianceTexas area of the city. 

Alliance is a 27,000-acre master-planned community from Ross Perot Jr.’s company Hillwood. It has an industrial pipeline of 8.2M SF, including a 1.2M SF speculative building that Hillwood plans to deliver next summer.

The area's profile has also grown thanks to the popularity of the television program Landman, which is overseen by Taylor Sheridan and filmed at his huge Fort Worth production studio in Alliance.

"Fort Worth has … a little grit,” Republic Property Group Senior Vice President of Development Seth Carpenter said. “There's real true character here, and that's attractive to people because they can find a place in the nicer suburb areas ... or thriving, highly dense areas."

The city’s changing landscape has also prompted many longtime residents of Fort Worth and its suburbs to evolve past former “don’t Dallas my Fort Worth” attitudes about development, The Beck Group Director of Business Strategy John Beck said. 

The area has maintained its authenticity but has adopted more of a growth mindset, he said.

"We do want these Fortune 500 companies, and we do want a world-class real estate apparatus,” Beck said. “That's really healthy for the community."

LanCarte said she would like to see the area attract more corporate relocations but called the Tarrant County office market the strongest it’s been in a long time. 

While he said he’s bullish on the future outlook for Tarrant County, Dyer tempered his enthusiasm by pointing out there’s still progress to be made. 

"I want to see the existing developments underway get absorbed before we get really excited," he said.