(Bloomberg)—Wells Fargo & Co. is seeking millions of dollars in tax breaks for a new office campus in a suburb of Dallas.
Irving’s city council is set to vote Thursday on a package with a value of more than $30 million for the new Wells Fargo campus. The facility would serve as a regional hub for the San Francisco-based bank, according to the city council agenda. Irving is a northwest suburb of Dallas and is adjacent to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
Finance firms have been expanding in the north Texas region, drawn by access to talent, low taxes and a friendly regulatory environment, with companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Fidelity Investments and Vanguard Group Inc. choosing the Lone Star State for growth. Last month, the city of Dallas granted Goldman Sachs as much as $18 million in tax breaks for a new office tower that would house 5,000 workers. Last year, brokerage Charles Schwab Corp. moved its headquarters to the affluent Dallas suburb of Westlake from San Francisco.
If the city approves the tax package for Wells Fargo, the bank would be required to construct at least two 400,000-square-foot (37,000-square-meter) buildings as well as a 4,000-space parking garage by the end of 2026, according to the agenda. The buildings would be developed on vacant land next to a popular mixed-used development that’s also home to the Toyota Music Factory and Irving Convention Center as well as restaurants, offices and residences. The new office in Irving would be about a 10-minute drive from the airport.
“Wells Fargo continually assesses our real estate portfolio to ensure we are best meeting the needs of employees and customers, responding to consumer and economic trends, and managing our costs responsibly,” bank spokesperson Beth Richek said in an emailed statement. “We do not have anything more to share at this time.”
Irving representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment.
While Wells Fargo is headquartered in San Francisco, it has employees spread across the country as a result of a series of acquisitions. The bank has more employees in Charlotte, North Carolina, than in any other city, while many of its top executives work out of New York. The firm had about 19,000 employees in Texas, including 5,800 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as of April 2019, when it held its annual shareholders’ meeting there.
Under Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf, Wells Fargo has been seeking to consolidate its corporate real estate as part of a larger firmwide cost-cutting initiative. The bank said in a January 2021 presentation that it had about 46 million square feet of office real estate, which it expected to reduce by 15% to 20% by the end of 2024.
The Irving tax-break package was reported earlier by the Dallas Morning News.
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