Wells Fargo's opening of its $570 million office campus in North Texas is boosting the region's standing as a national finance hub that's served as home to financial giants including Comerica and Charles Schwab.
More than 4,500 employees are based in a hybrid model at the two-tower, 10-story campus on 22 acres along Lake Carolyn in Irving, Texas, about 12 miles northwest of downtown Dallas. Wells Fargo, the San Francisco-based bank with $2.1 trillion in assets, finished moving employees representing 10 business lines into its campus spanning about 850,000 square feet in the past month.
While Comerica, which is being bought by Fifth Third Bank, moved to Dallas years ago and was joined in the area more recently by Charles Schwab, more real estate tied to the finance sector is on the way: Goldman Sachs is building its own 800,000-square-foot campus just north of downtown Dallas, and the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are both expanding in the region.
Dallas-Fort Worth is "performing strongly in insurance as well as banking and finance," King White, founder and CEO of locally based Site Selection Group that finds property for businesses, told CoStar News. "Most cities are not like this."
Even though Charlotte, North Carolina, has a heavy financial services presence, it's a smaller metropolitan area and is not as diversified as the Dallas-Fort Worth region, said White, who wasn't involved in the Wells Fargo site selection.
Wells Fargo's new campus was designed with an open floorplan, fewer private offices and more collaborative spaces than at its other offices across the country. It also represents Wells Fargo’s first net positive energy campus, meaning it produces more power than it consumes.
"This campus really does solidify the importance of the Dallas-Fort Worth area for us and our long-term commitment to the state," Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO Charlie Scharf said during a campus opening event on Wednesday. "If [our employees] came here from other parts of the country, they'd be extremely jealous to see how modern and collaborative it is. It's focused on how we want people working together."
Major project
The campus in Las Colinas Urban Center took about two years to develop. Wells Fargo was offered $5.4 million from a Texas Enterprise Fund grant for the campus, as well as a $30 million incentive package from the city of Irving in exchange for its investment and the creation of new jobs.
Scharf, who wore cowboy boots at the event, said Wells Fargo likes doing business in the Dallas-Fort Worth region because of the quality of talent and the state's business friendly environment, touting that he has Gov. Greg Abbott's cell phone number for any needs that may arise.
In all, Wells Fargo has about 460 branches, 1,500 ATMs and 17,000 employees in Texas.
Texas, once known as a center for the oil and gas industries, has diversified its economy, helping it withstand challenges in the energy sector in the past year. It ranked as the second fastest-growing economy in the United States by gross domestic product, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, behind North Dakota. Texas' gross domestic product grew 6.8% in the second quarter of 2025 to $2.7 trillion, surpassing the gross domestic product of Canada and of Russia.
"We knew it was very important to have a diversified economy, but it's also equally as important to ensure that access to capital is here for growing businesses," Abbott said at the event. Dallas-Fort Worth region has grown to become "truly an epicenter of finance in the United States."
Wells Fargo owns the campus where most of its employees gather three days a week in a hybrid work model. Other banks, like JPMorgan Chase & Co., have phased out their hybrid work schedules for employees, calling all workers back to the office five days a week, as CoStar News has reported.
Amenities at Wells Fargo's new campus include a full dining pavilion, a barista-staffed coffee bar and a fitness center with showers and wellness rooms, like many new office buildings. Those perks are meant to help make it easy to keep workers on site, said Lauren Prickett, director of interior architecture and design with Ware Malcomb. Prickett was not involved in the project but has decades of experience at real estate services firm CBRE and Perkins + Will.
Steering staff into 'designed collisions'
"They want to try to provide them with amenities they need to stay engaged and on campus interacting with others through designed collisions," Prickett told CoStar News. "The amenities not only make it easier to get through a workday, but they go above and beyond with having a barista make coffee."
The office campus also has terraces with outdoor lounge chairs and lakeside access for workers, showing that Wells Fargo wants to offer wellness spaces for its workers and that can be a "huge recruitment tool," Prickett said.
The outdoor lounge chairs overlook Lake Carolyn in the Las Colinas Urban Center. The lake has pedestrian trails that offer a 2.9-mile loop. Wells Fargo is adding a promenade with scenic access fronting the lake that is expected to be ready in early 2026.
Employees have access to a 4,000-space covered parking garage with 10 electric vehicle charging stations and motorcycle parking. The parking garage is connected to the campus through a pedestrian skybridge over the roadway. The campus also sits at a Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail station.
Solar panels on the roof help to make it Wells Fargo's first energy net-positive campus. Even if there's a power outage, the campus has battery storage to ensure it remains operational.
High-tech conference rooms know how many workers are inside a room at any given time and for sensitive meetings, the exterior windows that have their own IP addresses can turn from transparent to black for secure conversations.
"If people spend time commuting to the office, you want to design a workplace that is enticing and attractive," Prickett added. "There's definitely the haves and have nots when it comes to having a workplace with amenities and companies want to be part of the haves."
For the record
KDC is the developer. Austin Commercial is the project's general contractor. Corgan is the architecture firm. Kimley Horn is the landscape and civil engineer.