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The best spot for manufacturing in the U.S.? A group of real-estate executives ranked Fort Bend at No. 2. The fastest-growing white-collar address? No. 3 in the nation, according to American Demographics magazine. How about family values? Fort Bend has the eighth-highest percentage of traditional families in the country, says the U.S. Census Bureau. You can keep this up for quite a while. Fort Bend has the nation's ninth most diverse population. It has the lowest dropout rate in the six-county Houston metropolitan area, and a college-education rate that is 49% higher than the U.S. and Texas averages. Convinced yet? Amid the sedentary economy of Houston and the smokestacks and refineries of much of the Gulf Coast, Fort Bend County has emerged as a utopia of sorts-an unheralded center of explosive growth, a magnet for educated, non-union, ethnically diverse workers who own their homes, earn higher-than-average incomes and live in nuclear families. It is a prosperity that this county of 245,000 owes in large part to its crime-ridden, traffic-laden neighbor to the north- the city of Houston. The city's best and brightest - like their counterparts throughout the nation-are flocking to the suburbs. And for many, Fort Bend County is the suburb of choice. Indeed, from 1980 to 1992, Fort Bend County's population grew at an average annual rate of 5.4%. That compares with a rate of 1.8% for all of Texas, and just 0.4% for Houston. "This is a threat to the viability of Harris County and of Houston itself," says Jared Hazleton, director of the Center for Business and Economic Analysis at Texas A&M University. "The property tax base shrinks, and then the services shrink, and that causes more people to move out." Houston officials are quick to counter that Fort Bend has the percentages on its side because it's starting from such a small base. Even so, since 1980, Fort Bend grew by 117,780 residents, 40% more than the 84,297 increase posted by Houston. |
The invasion has turned Fort Bend's farmland into master-planned communities. Big names like Gerald Hines and American General Corp. are building pristine residential, retail and office centers, bringing a sense of order that contrasts sharply with nearby Houston's unzoned, hodgepodge development. "If you have a very nice community, people will come to it," says Herbert W. Appel Jr., president of the Greater Fort Bend Economic Development Council. And lest they be accused of representing just another white-flight suburb, Fort Bend officials are armed with Census Bureau data naming the county one of the most eUhnically diverse in the country: 54% white, 21% black, 19% Hispanic and 6% Asian. Credit much of Fort Bend's diversity to the oil recession of the 1980s. When the bottom fell out of Uhe Houston-area economy, the snazzy planned developments southwest of Uhe city suddenly became affordable to more people. "If you want your city to be integrated, Just have a huge recession," says Al Ballinger, economics data manager for the University of Houston Center for Public Policy and a resident of Fort Bend County. "To a large extent it's a real estate pricing phenomenon. Housing became very affordable for minorities who arc traditionally kept out of certain areas." But before anyone starts trumpeting Fort Bend as the feel-good county of the future, it should be noted that the various ethnic groups have congregated in separate pockets throughout the county, and many parts remain segregated. |
"The numbers make it sound
like every third house is owned by a black, but that's not the way it is,"
Mr. Ballinger says.
One other point worth mentioning: Fort Bend County isn't just another bedroom community, its residents trudging off to work in the big city every day. Although 46% of county residents still work outside the area, increasing numbers of people are finding jobs near home. This month, Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Newark, N.J., began closing regional offices in Houston, and moving as many as 1,300 jobs to Sugar Land in Fort Bend. Just this week, Makita USA Inc., a Cerritos, Calif., hand-tool and power-tool maker, is expected to announce a new distribution center in Fort Bend County, bringing with it about 40 jobs. And Los Angeles-based Unocal Corp., the oil and gas company, also has moved 700 jobs to Fort Bend County, including 200 from Houston. Nevertheless, Houston remains the region's economic engine, and Fort Bend County officials say they are well aware of their economic dependence on the Bayou City. "AII of our eggs are in the same basket," says Cliff Terrell, executive vice president of the Richmond/Rosenberg Area Chamber of Commerce. It's to our best benefit to be cooperative with the entire Houston region."
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