Alcon Laboratories is considering a major $100M expansion of its Fort Worth campus

Alcon Laboratories, already one of the largest employers and taxpayers in Tarrant County, is exploring a major expansion of its Fort Worth campus.

Alcon, which started in Fort Worth and has grown to become the world’s largest eye care device company, is looking to invest an estimated $100 million to build a 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility next to its campus at 6201 South Freeway, off Interstate 35W about eight miles south of downtown.

Records filed with the city Friday show the company will meet with city Development Services staff about the project late this month. Such pre-development meetings are designed to help developers and engineers better understand zoning requirements or any site-specific issues.

The 135-acre site is immediately east of Alcon Laboratories’ existing campus, along East Altamesa Boulevard. Alcon already owns the vacant land extending to Campus Drive.

Alcon representatives and project engineers did not immediately respond to the Star-Telegram’s requests for comment on Friday. The global company based in Switzerland operates in 60 countries and serve patients in more than 140 countries. Alcon’s most recent earnings report projects close to $9.5 billion in net sales in 2023.

Alcon Laboratories in Fort Worth employs about 4,500 people, making it the eighth largest employer in Tarrant County, and the company is the second largest industrial taxpayer in Tarrant County after General Motors, according to TAD records.

The possible expansion could significantly increase tax revenue. It’s not clear how many new jobs could be created. Preliminary sketches for the site show space for about 640 parking spots, as well as a new gated employee entrance off Altamesa Boulevard and possibly another future warehouse.

The company was born in Fort Worth in 1945 with a small pharmacy started by Robert Alexander and William Conner, who combined their names to come up with “Alcon.” In 1947, they incorporated as Alcon Laboratories, and a year later they started to market products nationally.

In 1953, Alcon introduced plastic packaging for ophthalmic solutions, including a “droptainer” that eliminated the eyedropper and allowed medication to flow directly from the container into the eye. Eventually, Alcon provided instruments to perform cataract and other types of surgery, eye drapes for surgery, a line of glaucoma products, irrigating solutions and contact lens products.

By the mid-1990s, Alcon’s 150-acre campus in south Fort Worth was home to nine buildings and 2,500 employees, including hundreds of research scientists, manufacturing workers and managers.

Although it has grown significantly over the past 70 years, now with two business divisions of surgical and vision care, Alcon’s Fort Worth campus remains a major operational, commercial and innovation hub.

Alcon relocated its headquarters to Geneva in 2018, citing an opportunity to “increase Alcon’s global scale and reach to better serve customers.” The company employs a total of 25,000 people.

Leaders at Texas A&M expect Alcon to also have a significant presence in downtown as part of the future Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus, which has a $320 million expansion in the works.

This story was originally published October 21, 2023 at 11:28 AM.

Jenny Rudolph

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Jenny Rudolph covered North Texas business and economic development at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from 2022 to 2023. Her position was funded through a philanthropic partnership with the R4 Foundation as part of the Crossroads Lab.