By Taylor Williams An attractive, successful woman walks into a bar and posts up. Within minutes, multiple men have approached her, offering to buy her a drink. And while she doesn’t really need the freebie, who can blame her for accepting it? After all, nothing’s more American than having a little extra icing on your cake. To analogize this scenario to commercial real estate, think of Texas as the woman and the burgeoning semiconductor industry as the free drinks. The state’s economy was doing just fine without the mega-boost from manufacturing initiatives stemming from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which has resulted in tens of billions of dollars in capital investment for North and Central Texas. But with a well-deserved reputation for welcoming businesses of all types, Texas wouldn’t be Texas if it didn’t court and embrace these manufacturers in these areas, which for many years were predominantly rural communities. Semiconductors, or computer chips, are essential elements of virtually all electronic and computing devices, including electric vehicles, phones, tablets, TVs, home appliances, solar panels and video game consoles. The CHIPS and Science Act laid the framework for the country to gain market share in terms of manufacturing these components, …
