It seems like every time you read the news lately, there’s a story about another employer moving its corporate headquarters to Plano or Frisco. But anyone who has recently driven on the Dallas North Tollway or Sam Rayburn Tollway knows that traffic congestion is getting worse. According to the Dallas Morning News, many companies are responding by looking elsewhere in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for places to set up their facilities. 

Financial services firm Charles Schwab decided to locate their new facility off Highway 114 in Westlake, near other financial services companies such as Fidelity Investments. The 500,000- square-foot Charles Schwab facility will have over a thousand employees when it opens in 2019.

Further down the road off SH 114 in Southlake, a new complex near the Solana facility will become the home base for TD Ameritrade. The company currently employees about 1,000 people in two facilities in North Fort Worth. These employees will be moved to a new Southlake facility that will eventually employ up to 2,000 people.

Allen and McKinney, off Highway 75 in Collin County, are also seeing the growth of new corporate locations as alternatives to Frisco and Plano. Because Allen and McKinney are in the same general vicinity as Plano and Frisco, it will spread out some of the concentration of employees without making them too remote.

Traffic in the Collin County tollway corridor area that includes Frisco and Plano is already beginning to be a problem. There’s also a sense that the talent pool may start to tighten in these regions. By expanding operations into other parts of the DFW area, companies still have access to a large number of potential employees, while diverting traffic to somewhat less populated areas.