It’s a beautiful sight. Seeing the ground breaking where the new Traxxas headquarters will take shape over the next year brings to mind how hard we fought to attract the company to Craig Ranch. Traxxas had a lot of options. The leader in hobby-class radio controlled cars, trucks, and boats considered staying in Plano or moving to a larger site in Allen or McKinney.
As the first corporation to move its headquarters to Craig Ranch, it was obviously important to be in the running for the campus. Because the development has many of the components companies are looking for in a headquarters—prime location, easy access to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, and quality-of-life amenities—it was a good fit. But winning the deal wasn’t easy. Traxxas spent three years looking for the right place to relocate its corporate headquarters. Its CEO Mike Jenkins will tell you he quickly saw the value of being part of the Craig Ranch master plan, but there were a lot of details to work out.
The rough economic climate was probably our biggest negative; it also made teamwork crucial in getting a complex deal like this done. It was the combination of incentives by the City of McKinney, the Economic Development Commission, and Craig Ranch that ultimately made this deal happen. If just one of those components had been missing, we would not all have been celebrating the Traxxas ground-breaking last month.
The City of McKinney granted tax abatements of approximately $280,000. The EDC gave a cash grant of $400,000, and Craig Ranch provided $500,000 in infrastructure and incentives. A lot of people knew about the city incentives, but Craig Ranch also put infrastructure into place early and received roadway and utility impact fee credits that we passed on to Traxxas. That was a definite plus.
Today we are seeing those investments pay off. The project has increased in size to a 30-acre, $40 million corporate campus that includes a 100,000-square-foot, three-story corporate office facility; a 75,000-square-foot auditorium and car museum; as well as a 90,000-square-foot distribution center on 16 acres of land. The campus will also feature a helipad, as well as test facilities and racetracks with public access. Traxxas is in escrow to purchase an additional 14 acres of land.
But best of all, McKinney has a new corporate citizen with an exemplary history of community involvement and support—and guaranteed job growth. Traxxas will initially move 100 employees with an average salary of more than $60,000 in 2012, with another 50 employees by 2013.
It all came down to working together to create a larger commercial tax base and job growth in McKinney. Traxxas is indeed a victory in which we can all share.
David Craig is president and CEO of Craig International and the founder of Craig Ranch. Contact him at [email protected].
