Arlington, TX
Arlington is known as the entertainment capital of North Texas, home to the Cowboy’s AT&T stadium, the Ranger’s Globe Life Stadium, Six Flags, and many other attractions which bring an estimated 48.9 million visitors annually with an economic impact of $1.4 billion. Over $5 billion has been invested into the entertainment district over the past 5 years, adding thousands of jobs and positioning Arlington as an attractive destination for decades to come. The $1+ billion Globe life Field redevelopment will keep the Rangers in Arlington through at least 2054, and Jerry Jones has committed $300 million to renovating the AT&T Stadium for the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup. Loews Hotels has now invested over $1 billion in the entertainment district, first with a 300+ room luxury hotel as a part of the Texas Live! project that brought 200,000 square feet of retail, dining, and entertainment, along with 35,000 square feet of convention space to downtown Arlington. The biggest and most recent project, the $550 million Loews Arlington Hotel and Convention Center is set to open next month, bringing 888 luxury hotel rooms and over 266k square feet of convention space. The third project will be a redevelopment of the Sheraton Arlington Hotel, adding 500 rooms, 25,000 square feet of convention space with parking and connections to the neighboring Esports Stadium and Expo Center and Arlington Museum of Art, with an expected economic impact of $3.1 billion the next 30 years.
Although Arlington is best known for entertainment, the countercyclical industries: education, healthcare, manufacturing, and government make up most of the city’s largest employers. It has a diverse economy with robust job growth, adding roughly 20,000 jobs and issuing nearly 2000 certificates of occupancy to new businesses last year according to Mayor Jim Ross. This is thanks in large part to its central location, equidistant to downtown Dallas, Fort Worth, and the DFW airport, it has access to the fourth largest labor pool in the country. Texas Health Resources is the largest local employer in all North Texas, employing 27,000 people at last count by Dallas Business Journal. General Motors was already one of the 10 largest local employers in North Texas with over 10,500 locals employed before the recent announcement of a $500 million plant expansion for SUV manufacturing. American Airlines recently completed the final “hospitality portion” of the 300-acre campus that will be home to a total of 12,000 full-time employees within the submarket, and the employee hotel and conference center will serve as the location for training and education for all their 130,000 employees. Education is also a major economic anchor within the submarket. Arlington ISD is the largest employer of Arlington residents with 8,500 employed, followed by University of Texas at Arlington. The Tier 1 research university surpassed total enrollment of 45,000 students and employs nearly 8,000 people, so it’s no surprise Arlington has one of the most educated labor forces in Texas, ranked second in the state for the percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Cost of living in Arlington is 1% above the national average, which is the lowest of any major submarket in DFW. For reference, Fort Worth is 1.2% above the national average, Denton is at 4.6%, Grand Prairie and McKinney are at 6.8%, Dallas, Frisco and Irving are at 7%, while Plano, Garland, Carrolton and Richardson are 7.1% above the national average.
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