Fort Bend County’s economy booms
Once a bedroom community, the area has seen surges in its population, employment
SUGAR LAND — On a recent morning, Sugar Land Town Square was serene, though not quite sleepy. The restaurants and retailers that ring the plaza, just outside City Hall, had yet to open. But locals were gathering for the free fitness classes held each Friday morning, boot camp followed by Zumba.
Among those watching the activity was Elizabeth Huff, director of economic development for this city of 110,000 people just southwest of Houston, in Fort Bend County. Recently, Huff said, she has faced an unusual challenge as corporate relocation leads pour in, and her department turns down 80 percent of them.
This isn’t because of local opposition to growth, but something more fundamental, Huff said. “We have nowhere to put them. We’re running out of space.”
Sugar Land, the largest city in the county, is at the forefront of the transformation of Fort Bend County from a bedroom community revolving around Houston to an economic powerhouse in its own right. For years, the county has billed itself as “Greater Houston’s Finest Address,” emphasizing its suburban lifestyle of singlefamily homes, manicured parks and well-lit sidewalks.
But other attributes — its highly educated population, business-friendly political landscape, affordable housing and access to institutions such as the University of Houston at Sugar Land — are attracting major employers such as the oil field services company Schlumberger, engineering firm Fluor and tech company Texas Instruments, as well as entrepreneurs.
Employment in Sugar Land jumped 14 percent from 2015 to 2020 — twice the national rate — even as its population grew
by less than 2 percent, according to a workforce analysis by Ernst & Young. It’s yet another sign of the community’s growth as a commercial center.
Fort Bend is one of the fastest-growing counties in America, and arguably its most diverse. It ranks among the state’s leaders in median household income and educational attainment.
Carlos Guzman, who in October became the director of Fort Bend’s new department of economic development and opportunity, said that from an economic development perspective, the county has what employers are looking for – skilled, educated workers.
“When I got into this game 20 years ago, it was primarily infrastructure,” he said. “But now it’s workforce. You can get a road in, in six months or a year, but I don’t know if you can get a qualified workforce in during that time.”
Boomtown
For much of the past two decades, the story of Fort Bend has been one of suburban sprawl with a distinctly Houston twist. As the century began, the county had a population of about 350,000, concentrated in a few small cities — Sugar Land, Missouri City, Rosenberg, and Richmond, the county seat — as well as the bits of Houston that spill over the Harris County line.
Today, the county’s population is approaching 900,000, and Woods and Poole, an economic consultancy headquartered in Washington, expects it to more than double to 1.8 million by 2050.
The effects of this growth are evident everywhere. Fulshear, which was a rural community of just 1,000 people in 2010, is now home to more than 14,000, making it the fastest-growing city in the state. Lamar Consolidated Independent School District — which consolidated Richmond and Rosenberg ISDs, as well as a number of tinier rural districts — is preparing to build five new schools, in anticipation of exponential growth.
Then there’s the diversity for which the county is known. Fort Bend is one of the most diverse counties in the United States, according to Rice University’s Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist and director of the long-running Houston Area Survey, which surveys 50,000 residents of Harris County and its environs every year about
their attitudes and experience.
“You can’t get much more diverse than Fort Bend County,” Klineberg said. “It’s 22 percent Asian, 21 percent African American, 24 percent Latino, and 29 percent Anglo. It’s just remarkable.”
Nirman Shah, a chef by background, explains that he and his family had worked 20 years in the restaurant industry, specializing in authentic Indian dishes, before deciding to go out on their own. They opened their first restaurant, Nirmanz Food Boutique, in Sugar Land in 2017 — picking Sugar Land specifically for the diversity.
Five years later, Shah said, the family “can all confidently say it was a wonderful decision.” The past few years were tumultuous of course: a pandemic, followed by labor shortages in virtually every sector. Still, the Shah family made it through, and this month is opening a second Nirmanz location, focused on fine dining, in Richmond.
“Not only is it amazing to reside in,” Shah said, “but business owners have the upper hand in being able to serve such an amazing population.”
Both the growth and the diversity have practical implications. After the 2020 Census, Fort Bend County picked up a new district in the Texas House. In November, its voters elected Dr. Suleman Lalani, a Baylor-trained physician by background and a Democrat, to represent them in Austin.
Along with Salman Bhojani of Tarrant County, Lalani will be one of the first Muslim state legislators in Texas history, as well as one of the first of South Asian descent.
“It’s diverse — but it’s not just diverse, it’s very inclusive,” Lalani said of Fort Bend County two days after he won his election. “We have what I call a very loving coalition of races, religions, and cultures.”
Diversity brings jobs
Historically, Fort Bend County’s biggest employer has been Houston. But it was increasingly
possible to live and work in Fort Bend, Guzman notes, even before the COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to remote work, accelerating the trend.
Homegrown success stories include Accredo Packaging, which specializes in sustainable packaging, and HCSS, which develops software for construction companies. Small businesses and restaurants are flourishing, too. Fort Bend has more than 17,000 employer establishments, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up more than 50 percent from 2015.
“(Fort Bend County) was so business-friendly,” recalls Steve McGough, president and CEO of HCSS, explaining why the company decided to move its headquarters from Houston to Sugar Land in 2009. Since then, the company has grown from 100 employees to some 450 — including a number of recent graduates from the University of Houston at Sugar Land.
“The diversity in the Fort Bend area has really given us a lot of local talent to draw from,” McGough said.
Lawson Gow, CEO of Houston Exponential, cites the entrepreneurial energy of the population as one of the reasons Houston Exponential — a nonprofit focused on advocating for and incubating startups — decided to set up an office in Fort Bend County in June. Other considerations: the county’s highly educated workforce, access to capital, and institutions such as the University of Houston and Memorial Hermann, which on Monday announced a $231 million investment at its Sugar Land campus.
“There are lots of cities and counties that just don’t have the raw ingredients necessary for something like this to be successful” Gow said, “but Fort Bend County does.”
There have been setbacks along the way. In 2021, CocaCola moved its Minute Maid division headquarters from Sugar Land to Atlanta — part of an effort to streamline operations for the consumer products giant.
County leaders in Fort Bend, for their part, see the county’s success as part of a rising tide across the region. Huff recalled that her former boss at the Greater Houston Partnership, Fred Welch, liked to use the phrase “co-opetition” to describe regional economic development efforts — a phrase she keeps in mind, she explained, when she recommends that corporations take a look at Missouri City or Richmond.
Klineberg, who for decades has studied the multicounty region summarized as “Houston,” says the dynamic in Fort Bend County, its place in the metropolitan area and relationship to the city of Houston are changing.
“I don’t think you can think of Sugar Land as a suburb, certainly not as a bedroom suburb,” Klineberg says. “It’s got its own town center. It’s got its own newspaper. It’s got its own baseball team. Why do they need Houston?”
A rhetorical question — at least, for the time being.