Dallas City Council is developing a taxpayer-funded economic incentive package to encourage luxury retailer Neiman Marcus to set up its new office headquarters in Cityplace Tower, just north of downtown off North Central Expressway.
The council plans to vote on a resolution outlining the package on Wednesday, May 25. It currently allows for a development grant of up to $5.25 million of taxpayer funds. Still, the grant is conditioned on Neiman Marcus moving into Cityplace Tower and hitting several employee-related targets.
To qualify for the package, Neiman Marcus will have to retain 1,100 jobs within city limits by the end of 2023, ensure that Dallas residents hold 35% of those jobs, provide an average wage of over $49 per hour, move its corporate headquarters into Cityplace Tower, and create 300 new jobs by the end of 2026.
The resolution also states, “the proposed project will not occur within the City without an offer of economic development incentives from the City.”
In an email to The Dallas Morning News, a company spokesperson stated, “The company is currently exploring options for corporate hubs to serve as modern workspaces. We are continuing to look for spaces that will meet these needs and, at this time, have not entered into any contractual agreements.”
Neiman Marcus announced back in February that it was looking for a new location to set up a new “office hub” per its hybrid work environment model.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Neiman Marcus had employees housed in three separate office buildings in the Dallas area. It used its bankruptcy reorganization in December 2020 to get out of two of those leases because so many of its employees were working from home.
Two years later, now that the pandemic is in its final stages and workers have begun to return to the office instead of working from home, the company has said it intends to move all of its headquarters staff to one centralized location.
