Richard Coyle searched the nation for a place to start ExteNet's next chapter before ultimately deciding on the Dallas area, becoming just the latest company to hang its hat in Texas.
ExteNet, the country's largest independent 5G provider, has been based in the Chicago area for 20 years but wanted a new headquarters where it could reimagine the future of the business. The company considered Southern California, Las Vegas and New Jersey but saw an opportunity in the Lone Star State — where ExteNet has an existing office in downtown Dallas — to set up shop in a growing city invested in technology alongside some of the company's most successful projects.
That pushed Coyle, ExteNet's president and CEO, who took on his leadership role at the company in December, to pick Frisco, a suburb about 30 miles north of downtown Dallas, to become the headquarters for the next iteration of a business now located in Lisle, Illinois. The executive, who is currently based in Las Vegas, according to his LinkedIn account, has a few reasons for deciding to relocate the company's headquarters from Illinois to the Dallas area.
"We are in a period, as a company, where we are entering into the next phase of where we want to go and we want to reimagine what the future will look like," Coyle told CoStar News. "We want to offer our employees a better work-life balance and get closer to our customers and partners. It's really about trying to bring back the feeling of community and sense of belonging at the company."
ExteNet's headquarters relocation to Texas is part of a larger national migration that accelerated in the pandemic, with a growing number of companies gravitating to states with fewer business regulations, a less costly workforce and no income tax. Since 2015, Texas has attracted about 350 new headquarters, with more announced last year than any other year, according to the governor's office.
Last year, the Dallas-Fort Worth area benefited from at least 40 major headquarters relocations or expansions, including the corporate relocation of AECOM and First Foundation and the expansion of Bell Helicopter. With Caterpillar's announced global headquarters move earlier this summer, Texas now has 54 Fortune 500 companies, leading the nation as home to the most top publicly traded U.S. companies by revenue.
Incentives
On Aug. 21, the Frisco Economic Development Corp. approved a five-year agreement with ExteNet for up to $306,800 in performance-based grants with certain requirements based on new full-time job creation, real property improvements and business personal property improvements.
The company signed a long-term lease for about 37,000 square feet on the top floor of The Offices Three at Frisco Station, a 242-acre, mixed-use development that was one of the nation's first projects built from the ground up with a 5G network. The office space is being built out for 150 employees, with 120 of those workers expected to begin work from the office once it opens early next year, Coyle said. The office property, developed last year, is largely vacant, with only one other tenant in the building.
ExteNet has already begun hiring employees in Texas, including its recently hired chief marketing officer MiSuk Koch, who has experience working at AT&T and Samsung. Coyle said he expects to hire for a variety of roles "on every level" of the business, from analysts to accountants to even some senior leadership positions that have become available as some executives opt out of making the move to Texas. The entire senior leadership team is expected to be based out of the new headquarters office next year.
"There's a lot of talent specializing around 5G and different technologies [in the region]," Coyle said, adding companies like Ericsson, T-Mobile and Verizon also have a significant presence in Dallas-Fort Worth. "With these companies training a lot of that talent, we are able to tap in and benefit from that knowledge. It's not like that up in Lisle or Chicago. Down here there is a deeper pool of talent in emerging technologies."
With the move to Frisco, ExteNet is also able to get closer to its customers and partners, he said. The top floor of the office building gives executives at the company the ultimate showroom to offer would-be customers: The Star in Frisco, which is home to the global headquarters of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys.
Connecting the Cowboys
The fiber provider has similar partnerships with other Texas sports venues and companies. ExteNet has an exclusive partnership with Spurs Sports & Entertainment, the company behind fan experiences at AT&T Center in San Antonio, home to the NBA's San Antonio Spurs. Recently, ExteNet also unveiled an agreement with Circuit of the Americas to deploy fiber to its 1,500-acre Formula 1 racing facility in Austin.
In making the move to Texas, Coyle said he expects about 40 employees to remain in the former headquarters office in Lisle.
"For us, it's a tough decision to leave Lisle — we've been there since 2002 — but when you think about the possibility of where we want to go, I think this move will have a positive effect on where we move forward," Coyle said.
ExteNet plans to keep the Lisle location open as a regional office along with offices in Burbank and San Ramon, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Paramus, New Jersey.
"During COVID, we got away from that sense of working together and being close together," he said. "I'm not saying everyone has to be back in the office, but we want to build a culture around collaboration, and I see this [move] as an opportunity to refocus on where we are trying to go. I believe if we change, we do the full change. It won't be for everyone, but, for the long run, I think it will be better for the business."