Carrier Corp. is already listing jobs for a Fort Worth address that doesn't officially have a green light yet. Postings for a Manufacturing Engineer, a Buyer, and a Senior Finance Manager all point to 1501 Distribution Drive in north Fort Worth, weeks before the City Council is even scheduled to vote on the tax incentives that would help bring the HVAC giant's $433.8 million manufacturing plant to town.
The council is set to decide on September 15 whether to approve a seven-year, $10.9 million tax abatement package for Carrier, according to the Fort Worth Report. The proposed site is Alliance Westport 12, a 1.2 million-square-foot building in the AllianceTexas corridor that developer Hillwood is currently constructing, sitting right next to the recently opened Wistron plant. Fort Worth is competing against three other cities for the project, and the job postings suggest Carrier's internal planning is already moving forward even as the political process plays out.
What Fort Worth Is Offering
Beyond the local abatement, Fort Worth intends to nominate Carrier for a Texas Enterprise Zone grant estimated at $2.5 million, per the Fort Worth Report's account of the city's economic development presentation. That estimate sits well under the program's statutory ceiling. Under Texas Enterprise Zone Program rules, a so-called “Triple Jumbo Project” involving at least $250 million in capital investment and 500 jobs can qualify for a maximum state sales tax refund of $3.75 million, or $7,500 per job.
In exchange, Carrier would commit to a minimum average salary of $75,000 and at least 495 jobs by the end of 2029, with a minimum investment of $433.8 million in the plant by the end of 2028. Of that total, the Fort Worth Report reports Carrier would spend $397.8 million equipping the plant and $36 million on real property construction costs, while directing 30% of construction spending to small businesses. Fort Worth's economic development agreements typically include performance-based clawback provisions that require companies to forfeit abatements if they miss salary or headcount targets, a mechanism the city has used in prior deals covered by Hoodline.
Why Carrier Is Looking Beyond Its Home Turf
Carrier is based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and reported $21.5 billion in sales in 2025. The company operates in 150 countries and employs 47,000 people worldwide. Last year, the company announced plans to invest $1 billion over five years in U.S. manufacturing, an effort it expects to create 4,000 jobs in research and development, manufacturing and field service, according to the Fort Worth Report.
The competition is real. Fort Worth Report notes that a competing Alabama site has a property tax rate one-quarter that of Fort Worth, while a Virginia contender's property tax rate runs half of Fort Worth's. Both rival locations also sit closer to Carrier's existing U.S. operations in Florida and North Carolina. Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce chief economic development officer Brianna Brown told the Fort Worth Report the project “would represent the single largest investment that Carrier has made in its history,” and said landing the plant in Fort Worth “would enhance our manufacturing cluster.” Carrier is expected to make its decision in the third quarter of 2026.
A Bet on AI-Driven Cooling Demand
The new plant would support production of components for heat pumps and battery assemblies, and Carrier has said it will also back innovations in liquid cooling for data centers and battery-enabled technologies, using additional investment to expand existing facilities and build the new manufacturing site. That focus tracks with the rest of Carrier's business: the company entered 2026 with a $1 billion data center backlog and a target of $1.5 billion in data center revenue for the year, fueled by a 500% year-over-year jump in data center orders during the first quarter, according to Investing.com. In April, Carrier Ventures expanded its investment in ZutaCore to scale two-phase, waterless direct-to-chip liquid cooling for high-density AI server racks, per a statement from Carrier Global Corporation.
Industry analysts see plenty of room for that bet to pay off. Stratview Research projects the global data center liquid cooling market will grow from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $7.9 billion by 2031 as AI workloads push thermal densities higher. Locating next to Wistron only sharpens the logic: the AllianceTexas neighbor held its grand opening in July, a $761 million investment across two North Fort Worth buildings assembling Nvidia AI supercomputing hardware, as CBS News Texas reported. Hoodline covered that project's arrival in Nvidia's AllianceTexas landing, and the Wistron plant manufactures components for data centers, the same broad category Carrier is now chasing.
Fort Worth's Growing Manufacturing Playbook
The Carrier pursuit fits a pattern the city has repeated across the Alliance corridor this year. Fort Worth approved up to $4.5 million in tax relief for drone maker Mach Industries earlier this month, and in 2025 gave Wistron a 10-year tax abatement that cut incremental city property taxes from $41.4 million down to $10.6 million. Hillwood's 27,000-acre AllianceTexas development, where Alliance Westport 12 is rising, has generated more than $142.9 billion in total economic impact and over 73,000 direct jobs since it was founded in 1989. The Fort Worth Report discloses that Hillwood is a financial supporter of its newsroom.
The manufacturing push also lines up with regional labor trends. Dallas Federal Reserve data published in July showed manufacturing and trade/transportation jobs make up a larger share of total employment in Fort Worth than in Dallas or Texas as a whole, a dynamic Hoodline detailed in its earlier report on the city's Fed employment scorecard. For now, the open questions are whether Alabama or Virginia will counter with richer incentives before Carrier's third-quarter deadline, and how Fort Worth's workforce pipeline will absorb simultaneous hiring ramps at Carrier, Wistron and Siemens. The Fort Worth City Council heard the economic development department's presentation on the project and is scheduled to vote on September 15.
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