Only $600,000 in incentives were tapped before the fusion project shut down, Bill Shelton, managing director of Ft. Worth-based Cornerstone Group, tells GlobeSt.com. Shelton also is an instructor at Texas A&M's Real Estate Center. He's also planning to roll the deals into a book on incentive practices across the US.

"It used to be location, location, location. It's incentive, incentive, incentive today," Shelton says. But, he stresses, it often takes more than incentive to lure corporate chiefs to the Lone Star state. "It's not the driving force in many cases," he says, citing the region's centralized positioning and union option as being equally important when the cards are laid on the table.

Doing business these days means "playing by monopoly rules," Shelton says. The game-playing strategy in recent months proved successful in Amarillo where a $45-million, 10-year deal sewed up Bell Helicopter Textron as a newcomer to the town with a population of 120,000.