In late 2004, executives with Fluor Corp., which provides engineering, procurement, construction, operations and project management services for other companies, made a decision that many firms must make: whether to move closer to the majority of its customers.

Fluor officials determined in order to better serve its North American customer base, it needed to relocate its corporate headquarters closer to the South and Southeast United States. After a lengthy and thorough search process, the company announced in July that it would relocate its headquarters to the Dallas metro area, in the city of Irving.

About 80 percent of Fluor’s revenues are generated from companies that are located closer to Texas than to Southern California, the company’s current corporate home.

Fluor is developing a 26-acre site in the Las Colinas business community in Irving. The company expects to move into the 120,000 square foot complex in May. The three-story building will include office space, an auditorium, cafeteria and fitness center.

“We want the new Fluor headquarters to be representative of our company’s achievements worldwide and believe that in Las Colinas we will be able to build a business complex that will serve as the center of our success,” said Alan Boeckmann, chairman and CEO of Fluor. “The communities of Greater Dallas offer good quality of life choices for our employees, and Las Colinas is a location that supports our continuous efforts to enhance operational efficiency and client focus.”

About 100 people have agreed to relocate from the California headquarters to Irving, according to the company, with another 100 to be hired locally. The Fluor facility represents the 19th Fortune 500 company to be headquartered in the Dallas area, which places the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex No. 6 in the United States for the number of Fortune 500 headquarters.

Many Reasons To Expand

There’s a reason — actually lots of reasons — expanding and relocating companies are choosing to stake their future in Texas. The state features a combination attractive to a variety of industries: a large pool of educated workers, a good quality of life, a variety of transportation options and the location for companies to quickly reach the majority of the United States.

Goods can move to, from and through Texas through every mode of transportation: rail, road, air and water.

In April, Turbana Corp. chose Port Freeport, Texas, as the site for importing bananas from Colombia to the United States. Port Freeport, also home to Dole and Chiquita banana operations, is the No. 2 container port on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Turbana and Isabella Shipping, headquartered in Coral Gables, Fla., are business units of C.I. Union de Bananeros de Uraba, a cooperative of Colombian banana growers commonly known as Uniban.

At Port Freeport, Turbana employees now use 30,000 square feet of cool storage facility space and 60,000 square feet of dry storage space. Turbana officials estimate the company will move 75,000 metric tons of bananas annually through the port.

“Our program requires a cool storage facility, and the people of Port Freeport recognized our needs and worked with us in creating a building that meets and even exceeds our expectations,” said Carlos Agudeldo, operations manager for Interoceania Agency, which is the agent for Isabella Shipping, a subsidiary of Turbana.

Agudeldo said the company considered several other factors before relocating its operations to Texas. Those reasons include the port’s proximity to the southbound Gulf routes and to the U.S. banana consumption market.

He also cited the management of the Port of Freeport, the quick access to quality roads and rail lines, the deep-draft berths at the port, and dockside space for refrigerated imported goods and dry export cargo.

In San Antonio, the National Security Agency, the nation’s cryptology branch, has leased the former Sony chip plant in Northwestern Bexar County and is hiring at least 1,500 employees.

Even more jobs could be added as the site develops in several phases, according to the NSA. Nationwide, the NSA is hiring up to 4,500 employees through 2008 and some of those employees will be located in San Antonio, according to Ellen Cioccio, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The NSA already has about 2,000 employees at Lackland Air Force Base’s Medina Annex in the metro.

In addition, a group of experienced analysts has transferred from NSA’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters to San Antonio. They will train military and civilian employees, Cioccio said.

The San Antonio NSA office includes personnel from the Army, Marine Corps., Navy, Air Force and Defense Department civilian employees.

“NSA is expanding its presence in San Antonio as part of our transformation efforts and as a result of the lessons learned from our global war on terrorism experiences,” Cioccio said.

San Antonio beat out sites in Georgia and Hawaii for the expansion project. San Antonio was chosen because the NSA already has a large, growing presence in the metro.

Meanwhile, cut and sew manufacturing company UEMC Inc. opened its new 100,000 square foot facility in October in San Antonio and is in the process of hiring more than 100 employees as part of the expansion.

UEMC, a woman-owned business, is a contract sewing and screen printing manufacturer that provides fabric and packaging products and services to military and corporate clients. The company, which was previously located in a 20,000 square foot facility, has been in San Antonio for more than 50 years.

UEMC’s new location has put the company in both a HUB and empowerment zone. Locating in the HUB zone provides the company an opportunity to compete for government contracts designed for small businesses.

Locating in an empowerment zone, which is typically an underutilized area of the community, allows the company to receive federal tax incentives for hiring individuals within the zone.

High Tech In Austin

Austin has a history of high-tech success, and 2005 was no exception. In April, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), based in Sunnyvale, Calif., announced that it would build an 825,000 square foot campus in Austin. The company will consolidate corporate, office and engineering design employees into a single, five-building complex.

Currently, AMD has 2,000 workers across 12 locations in Austin. Construction has started on the project and is scheduled to be completed sometime in 2007. According to AMD, the Austin site will shorten the commute times for many of its employees.

“Creating a new campus will allow us to improve efficiency, reduce employee commute miles and create a world-class AMD Austin campus,” said Kevin Lyman, senior vice president of human resources for AMD.

Also in April, Freescale Semiconductor chose Austin as the site to expand its global headquarters, ahead of cities from around the United States. The company, which manufactures semiconductors for the automotive, general industrial, networking and wireless industries, split off from Motorola in 2004.

Freescale plans to create about 500 new jobs in Austin during the next decade, and it will invest nearly $600 million in the project.

When it came time for the final decision, Freescale CEO Michel Mayer said Austin gives the company the best chance to attract and retain quality employees.

“Austin is a high-tech city with an attractive quality of life,” Mayer said. “It is an appealing environment for the innovators we need at Freescale.”