Austin Economy/Culture/Growth/Photos/Whatever

[The ATX]

Here's what today's storm system did to a border town on the Mexican side of the great Rio Grande trickle.  It was from a tornado, and at least 13 people were killed.  Weird car arrangement:  

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32877631

Edited May 26, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

Here's one last flood photo from Monday.  This is 6th St. Downtown:  

http://projects.statesman.com/then-and-now/memorial-day-flooding-2015/

Edited May 31, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

ESPN moved the X Games out of LA in an attempt to jump start interest in the games after a steady drop in attendance.  They cancelled the multiple international Summer X Games as well due to lackluster interest.  Last year's Austin games were the best attended in 10 years with over 160,000.  But they still had some problems with the heat and walking distances between events at the sprawling Circuit of the Americas F1 track.  They made some changes for this year with the biggest IMO being the morphing of the X Games into a combination games and music festival.  They have setup a music venue at the games with a capacity for 50,000.  The headliners are Metallica and Nicki Minaj (on different nights of course).  The concert attendance will no doubt be counted as part of the overall X Games Attendance.  Here's a Statesman article about the games:  

 

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/sports/officials-these-wont-be-your-2014-x-games/nmQfZ/#7a74c5f3.3948020.735748

Edited May 31, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

The Coors (as in beer) family is developing a 160 acre water park (and obligatory concert venue) in SE Austin near the airport:  

 

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/business/sports-entertainment-venue-planned-near-austin-air/nmSTG/

[The ATX]

This water/surfing park is going to be a bigger deal than I first thought.  The official announcement is scheduled for Thursday.  It will be an inland surfing destination that is apparently much larger than anything like it in existence. Considering that water supplies are usually a major concern here, this reminds me of something bizarro that would be built in Dubai.  It is by the Circuit of the Americas where the X Games also just happen to be getting underway on Thursday.  It could be they are hoping the park would be used if water sports are added to future X Games.  Also, a conspiracy theorist might suggest that the timing of the announcement is suspicious because they waited until a major flooding event to make the announcement.  The Coors family purchased the land last summer, and any water park announcement at that time would have met with some serious resistance.  In fact another large water park (Hawaiian Falls) was built here last year, and they got a lot of criticism because of the drought.

Edited June 2, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

Using both the 2010-2014 and 2000-2014 growth rates for Austin and San Jose, Austin should pass San Jose in 2018 to become the 10th largest city in the U.S.  Austin should hit the 1,000,000 population mark in 2017, and that's if the city sticks to it's current annexation practice of only annexing undeveloped and sparsely populated areas.  There are now close to a quarter million people living in unincorporated areas of Austin's ETJ.  If Austin got aggressive and annexed those areas, the city's population would increase to close to 1.2 million overnight and begin to rival Dallas.  That will not happen.  But in a slight reversal of recent practices, Austin has three major annexations scheduled for 2015, 2017 and 2020.  The one for this year is the Lost Creek subdivision that is home to around 5,000 people.  So Austin's population growth should get a nice bump this year in addition to the usual thousands of folks that move here every year.

[The ATX]

That was quick.  The 160 acre NLand Surf Park announced last week is already underway.  

https://www.facebook.com/surfparktexas

Edited June 8, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

One more post about the surf park...

 

Here'a a rendering of the park.  The lagoon/pool will be the size of "nine football fields" and have eleven different surfing areas with waves being generated every 60 seconds.  The surfing areas designated for advanced surfers will have six foot waves.

 

http://www.grindtv.com/surf/nland-surf-park-to-open-in-austin-texas/#PsWWhdC8ij1eWc9R.97

 

 

Here's a photo of Doug Coors, the creator and money behind this project.  He is appropriately standing in front of a cactus which is what Austin would largely consist of if left in its natural state.  He apparently bought a home here last year because he likes Austin.  But he also loves to surf, so this project happened.  

http://nlandsurfpark.com/

Edited June 8, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

This woman wanted a job as an ASL interpreter at Austin City Limits.  So she made this video of herself signing Lose Yourself.  It is awesome, and she got the job.  The sprawling Texas School for the Deaf campus is across the river and not too far away from the ACL studios located in the W Hotel.

 

• Video Link

Edited June 13, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

Another 6,800 jobs were created in the Austin metro in May.  But the unemployment rate ticked all the way up to 3.1% because of the usual amount of college graduates entering the workforce this time of year.

 

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/business/austin-job-growth-surges-as-texas-starts-to-shake-/nmg5D/?icmp=statesman_internallink_invitationbox_apr2013_statesmanstubtomystatesmanpremium#73e95bee.3948020.735768

[The ATX]

There are a lot of high quality drone videos of Austin with cool musical scores.  I don't post too many of them because they are probably only interesting to people who live here.  But this one is exceptional.  It appears UP no longer allows embedded videos, so here's the Youtube link:  

 

https://youtu.be/neaxx19sK2c 

[The ATX]

My opinion of the long term viability of self-driving cars is still a work in progress.  But Austin is the first city outside of Google's HQ in Mountain View where they are testing their cars.  Apparently they have already been testing them here for several weeks.  This is not your father's Lexus. 

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/technology/google-expands-self-driving-car-project-to-austin/nmsct/?icmp=statesman_internallink_invitationbox_apr2013_statesmanstubtomystatesmanpremium#f49571b6.3948020.735786 

[carolinaboy]

The ATX,

 

I recently watched a tv show on HBO called Sonic Highway. It's a show done about the Foo Fighters going around to various cities, exploring the musical heritage, talking to local musicians, etc. and then recording a song for an album there. One of the cities they visited was Austin. One of the comments I noticed from some of the local talent was they were afraid that all the development might push out all the artistic, musical, eccentric types that make Austin so vibrant. I may be overstating it a bit but that's the way I heard it. What say you?

[The ATX]

The ATX,

 

I recently watched a tv show on HBO called Sonic Highway. It's a show done about the Foo Fighters going around to various cities, exploring the musical heritage, talking to local musicians, etc. and then recording a song for an album there. One of the cities they visited was Austin. One of the comments I noticed from some of the local talent was they were afraid that all the development might push out all the artistic, musical, eccentric types that make Austin so vibrant. I may be overstating it a bit but that's the way I heard it. What say you?

It's a huge local issue right now.  I haven't posted much about it, but post #678 in the U/C projects thread has some info and links about one popular music venue on Red River St. that is having issues with the next door Hyatt House hotel that just got underway.  Also, post #256 in the in the proposed project thread is about an office tower just announced this week that will be built on the current site of the Austin Music Hall which is/was a 4,000 or so seat music venue.  

Musicians (and a lot of other folks) are getting priced out of Downtown and much of Austin in general due to the rapid increase in rents and home prices.  But the bigger problem is that Downtown music venues are starting to get priced out.  Most venues seem to rent their space as opposed to owning it.  So their landlords are selling out to developers because the demand for residential/office/hotel towers has made their properties worth much more than the rents that clubs and venues can afford.  E. 6th St. is largely protected as a historical district.  But the other entertainment districts (Red River, Rainey, Warehouse and W. 6th St.) are not protected by zoning.  Red River (which is an extension of the E. 6th St. entertainment area) and the Warehouse districts are especially under pressure from development.  

But it is not all doom and gloom.  There are still more night clubs/music venues/restaurants around Downtown than ever as far as I can tell.  There are around 300 or so such places which is why Downtown Austin is so popular.  The fear though, is that all of the residential and hotel towers are starting to bite the hand that feeds them. 

Edited July 11, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

General Motors has bought a 300,000+ sq. ft office building in North Austin.  They currently have around 500 employees in another slightly larger building in North Austin that used to be a Dell factory.  This is the building, and a story about it in the Austin Business Journal is in the link below it.

 http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/real-estate/2015/07/general-motors-buys-huge-building-in-north-austin.html

[The ATX]

It's being reported that GM will create 500 new Austin jobs with the purchase of the office building in my previous post. This is an expansion of their Austin IT Innovation center.  GM has four IT Innovation centers in the U.S., and the other three are in Atlanta, Phoenix and Warren (Metro Detroit). 

Edited July 18, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

Austin's mayor, Steve Adler, wants to put together a plan to lower Austin's high rent and home prices.  The number of people moving here has been out stripping the housing supply for quite a while despite all of the new construction.  The mayor wants to build 100,000 more housing units in the city to stabilize (or lower) prices.  Much of the new construction is only feeding the high end demand of the housing market which is putting a lot of pressure on the lower and middle income markets.  

http://cityhall.blog.statesman.com/2015/07/31/adlers-affordability-solution-for-austin-will-start-with-this-number/

[The ATX]

I don't normally keep up with the movie and TV shows being filmed here.  But I come across a lot of TV and movie filming permits when I'm searching the City of Austin's database for building permits.  Here's an article from a news site from that neighboring metro to the South of Austin that sums up the TV shows being filmed in Austin.  

http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/entertainment_columnists/jeanne_jakle/article/Austin-teeming-with-TV-productions-6437724.php

Edited August 15, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

The Austin area has become so spoiled with news about job creation IMO that what I think is big news is either ignored or barely mentioned by local media.  An example of this is that Amazon announced this week that they are building a facility in the Austin suburb of San Marcos that will employ 1,000.  Also, just two years ago Amazon built a similar facility just two towns further south on I-35 (20 miles?) in Shertz which is a San Antonio suburb.

Austin Business Journal Article

 

 

[The ATX]

Florida has overtaken California as the number #1 state from where new Travis County residents are moving from - by a 2-1 margin.

American-Statesman Article

[The ATX]

Apple is pretty secretive about their expansion plans and employment numbers, but here's a surprisingly detailed American-Statesman article about their Austin plans.

From the article:  

* Apple employs over 5,000 in Austin with "hundreds" of open positions that they are hiring for.

* Four of the seven buildings on their North Austin campus are completed.  The other three will be completed in 2016.

* Apple purchased a neighboring four building office park that in effect makes for an 11 building campus.

* Another office building in Northwest Austin was leased 100% by Apple.  This is the building:  

Source

 

The new campus from the American-Statesman article:  

 

And I guess to counter that long rectangular pool with fountains in the first photo in an area where water can be scarce, we have a lot of desert landscaping!

Edited September 6, 2015 by The ATX

[The ATX]

I don't know how much of an economic boost this really is, but Uber wants to hire 5,000 more drivers in Austin in addition to the 10,000 plus that they have.  (All of the big events/festivals and drunk tourists have really created a market here for them.)  I wonder if Lyft is even close to that, or if Uber is starting to leave Lyft in the dust?

Austin American-Statesman Article

[The ATX]

In the last week or so a California biotech company leased office space in Austin with plans to hire 400 people, AT&T announced they are hiring 200 locally and a Virginia cyber security company announced that they are moving their HQ to Austin and hiring 150.  The good news keeps coming.

[The ATX]

Whole Foods announced that one of their first three new concept 365 stores that will be opening in 2016 will be in the 'burb of Cedar Park.  The other two 365 stores with planned 2016 openings will be in San Francisco and Cincinnati.  I think this will be Whole Foods sixth local store.

Austin Business Journal Article

 

[The ATX]

The Trail Foundation is planning a $2.5 million improvement to the section of the 10-mile Hike and Bike Trail that passes under the Congress Ave. Bridge.  The Congress Ave. Bridge is also known as the Bat Bridge because of the 1.5 million Mexican Free-tail bats that make the bridge home.  They spend their days the crevices under the roadway that can be seen in the rendering below.  This will be a good place to witness the evening flight of the bats.  But I have no idea what the guano abatement plans are.  This will be one messy bridge.  The bat smell is strong just walking across the bridge on Congress Ave. during the day.  

Community Impact Article