Speaker Series - Presentation Recap

Jeff Fegan: Land Development at DFW International Airport — A Collaborative Journey

About Jeff

Jeff has more than 35 years in the airport industry. He spent 29 years with the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport — 19 years as the Chief Executive Officer.

Jeff's Unparalleled Experience

Jeff is considered a pioneer and innovator in airport commercialization. Since 1994, Jeff has transformed DFW into a high-performance entrepreneurial enterprise with a reputation of excellence in virtually all aspects of the operation.

Under his leadership, DFW became one of the first airports to embrace the Aerotropolis concept, which has resulted in significant new commercial development. Embracing this concept has led to substantial new revenues for DFW from projects like major industrial parks, hotels, foreign trade zone development, and the exploration of natural gas.

Jeff’s personal quest is to provide strategic advisory services to airport and aviation clients to facilitate connecting the needs of the aviation industry with service providers and products.

 Jeff Fegan

Summary and Video

As the Colorado Aerotropolis Visioning study looks forward, Jeff Fegan looked back on Fielding Aerostropolis QuestionsDFW’s development and the Aerotropolis around it. Highlights of Jeff’s presentation included:

  • Told of DFW’s commercial development focus on air-related warehouse and distribution activities but flexibility to attract others, like medical devices and sports merchandise. DFW hosts three hotels, golf, corporate headquarters and four auto dealerships.
  • Related how a consolidated car rental operation began what turned out to be DFW’s permanent revenue sharing arrangement with the four host cities.
  • Cited a cooperative planning task force, led by DFW’s VP of commercial development, to coordinate leads and to prevent developers from playing one city off against another.
  • Recounted how early DFW development was episodic until surrounding growth occurred. He credited the North Central Texas Council of Governments for leading the development of the surrounding transportation infrastructure.
  • Listed lessons learned—be cooperative, communicate, take risks, have patience, build trust. As a result, development projects got easier.
Watch a video of Mr. Fegan’s entire presentation.

Questions

Jay Hendrickson / 303-512-5991
[email protected]

Chris Primus / 303-323-9838
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