Austin Economy/Culture/Growth/Photos/Whatever

[The ATX]

There are several large data centers in Austin, and they don't employ a lot of people - at least in relation to their size.  So they are no big deal IMO, but Data Foundry is building their second local data center.  This new one is a rather large building at 325,000 square feet.  It will be located next to their first one which is 290,000 square feet.

Austin Business Journal

[The ATX]

We had some cool cloud formations during some stormy weather today.  This photo was taken in Round Rock at the R.R. Express baseball stadium:  

 

Community Impact

[The ATX]

This video depicts a typical Saturday night in downtown Austin, and shows  why so many people like it here.  But it does mention the problems we are facing about being a victim of our own success.

The Atlantic Monthly

[The ATX]

Samsung is investing $1 billion in it Austin facility and will create 500 jobs.  This is on top of their $4 Billion expansion in 2010.

Austin American-Statesman

[The ATX]

This has no direct impact on Austin's economy, but a massive shale oil field with a recoverable 20 billion barrels of oil was discovered in West Texas this week.  The states's oil revenue is a big part of TxDot's funding for transportation projects.  Now we just need the price of oil to go up.  I know, most people don't hope for that.   

Article

[The ATX]

The Trail of Lights at Zilker Park opened to the public last night.  This is where the Austin City Limits music festival is held.

Photo by stevenroundrock on Flickr

[The ATX]

The weather sucks today.  It was around 80 yesterday, and now it's in the 20s.   Where I'm at this is the first time in a couple years that the temperature has dropped below 30.   

[The ATX]

We had a cute little tornado in the burbs this morning.  But it did damage some buildings.

KXAN

[The ATX]

Here's the latest city and Metro population from the city's demographics website.  These numbers are as of January 1, 2017.  Compared to the U.S. Census, the city tends to slightly understate the city proper population and slightly overstate the Metro population.  But the numbers are always pretty close.  

The Metro is at ~2.1 million.  Hopefully the metro definition will be expanded in the near future for the first time in nearly 30 years.  There is a decent amount of growth in the counties surrounding the current Metro counties.  If that happens along with the ongoing high rate of growth,  the Austin Metro could hit 2.5 million in 2021.

I think the population growth of Austin proper has slowed and shifted more to the suburbs because of the high real estate prices in Austin compared to the suburbs.  In fact, the Austin Independent School district has been losing students for the past few years.  But that doesn't necessarily equate to a significant reduction in the city's growth rate because the school districts here don't line up with city boundaries.  There are some suburban school districts that cover parts of the City of Austin.  Also, many of the people moving to Austin are younger and without kids.  

Austin will be completing a rare annexation of an already populated area this year that should add at least 4,000 people to the city.  That and the current growth rate should bring the city's population to at least 960,000 by the end of this year.  Austin proper should be close to 1 million by the 2020 census.  There are also ~246,000 people living in unincorporated areas adjacent to the city that can annexed.   

 

City of Austin Demographics

[The ATX]

I don't post much about Austin's sunbelt sprawl because large subdivisions are boring.  But sadly it is happening more than ever.  This particular  project called Thompson Ranch just got approved, and it consists of 3,300 homes on 2,200 acres.  The reason I'm interested in it is because about 500 acres of it sprawls into Burnet County and relates to my previous post.  Burnet County hasn't been added to the Metro even though it's adjacent to Travis County.  Projects like this should help to connect Burnet County to the Metro.  The main reason it hasn't been added to the Metro yet is because the hilly terrain has prevented enough roads from being built to allow for the number commuters into Austin to reach the threshold that the Census Bureau looks for.  Here's a map of it from the link:  

[The ATX]

Here's a decent drone aerial of Austin.  

Youtube

[The ATX]

Here's the 2016 version of the fastest growing large metros (1,000,000 or more population) since the 2010 census.  The only difference among the top 10 metros since the 2015 list is that Dallas moved ahead of Denver.  Charlotte and Nashville are oh so close - only separated by .02%.

[The ATX]

The U.S. census released the 2016 city estimates, and Austin is at 947,890.  I would have expected lower numbers due to the high cost of living in the city compared to the 'burbs and the city's limited annexation practices.

[The ATX]

This is surprising news because there hasn't been any concerted effort to bring a pro sports team to Austin.  In fact the city would probably fight against any downtown stadium proposal even if it was paid for with private funds.  Anyway, a USL team will begin playing at COTA in 2019 in a not yet built 5k seat stadium.  Circuit of the Americas is located in far SE Austin, so there won't be any NIMBYs marching against a stadium proposal.

Statesman Article

[The ATX]

Apple CEO Tim Cook was in town today and toured Apple's second largest campus and other places in Austin.  Apple has 6,000 employees in Austin, and most of them work at Apple's 38 acre campus in North Austin.  The photo is from another Apple Austin site in West Austin.  One reason he was in Austin was for the the unveiling of an Apple App development partnership with Austin Community College.  From the article linked to below the photo:  

Quote

Under the education plan that Cook will announce, Austin Community College will offer Apple’s app development curriculum to its 74,000 students at 11 campuses this year.

The program, called App Development with Swift, is a full-year course designed by Apple engineers and educators to teach students elements of app design using Swift, a programming language developed by Apple.

Austin 512Tech Article

[The ATX]

The famous Franklin BBQ with the infamous 3-4 wait for dinner may have been a victim of Harvey.  The smokehouse burned down today, and the cause was wind blown embers.

Statesman Article  

[The ATX]

Two downtown streets are closed today due to falling glass because Harvey winds are blowing out windows on a high-rise apartment tower.  Some southeastern 'burbs are having severe flooding problems, but the city of Austin is mostly OK with the exception of power outages and a lot of downed power lines.

Statesman

[The ATX]

No surprise here.  But like a lot of cities,  Austin is going after the Amazon HQ2:  512Tech

 

 

[The ATX]

Link

[KJHburg]

In terms of Amazon I honestly think they need a couple of offices outside seattle in order to tap different cities strengths. This is the biggest elephant hunt the economic development world has ever seen.  But I wonder if they would be better served with a couple of new offices rather than another huge one. 

[The ATX]

26 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

In terms of Amazon I honestly think they need a couple of offices outside seattle in order to tap different cities strengths. This is the biggest elephant hunt the economic development world has ever seen.  But I wonder if they would be better served with a couple of new offices rather than another huge one. 

I've also been thinking that they should have three large campuses across the country instead of two - West, Central and East.  But they do have  numerous good sized offices all across the country already - just not with 50K employees of course.  The hysteria over this is ridiculous.  No city can meet all their requirements, so Amazon's requirements are going to be weighted.  But any tax incentive package will probably be weighted more heavily than most of the requirements.  All this city vs. city nonsense - especially over the transportation requirement - is just over the top.  

My opinion is that Amazon (like any other Tech company) is going to want to be in a city where Tech graduates and Tech employees are plentiful which just so happens to be a city where people will want to live.  I think it would be easy to make a list of those cities.  I don't want to name some of the cities that are falling over themselves for this, but Amazon would have a hard time attracting and keeping talent at those locations.

[KJHburg]

I agree I think Amazon needs several new offices instead of this one large mega one they are proposing. Austin has many benefits but so does Dallas and Charlotte. Not all jobs are technology oriented and people forget that.  I think you base a technology division somewhere, a more of finance HR center somewhere else and etc.  Of course they would be some cross over in each but I think that would serve them better. 

[The ATX]

This is a little odd.  Actress Sean Young has moved to Austin and started up a film location tour bus company.  It's starting off with three tour choices to filming locations for Dazed and Confused, Office space and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Austin Film Tours

KXAN Article

 

[The ATX]

Austin's unemployment rate has dropped to 2.6% thanks to the addition 9.1K jobs in October.  All those new comers are finding jobs.  This is Austin's lowest unemployment rate since peak of that crazy dot.com era in 2000.

Statesman Article

[The ATX]

The City of Austin has published the 01/01/2018 city and Metro population estimates.  The city proper is getting close to 1 million at 963,000, and the Metro is approaching 2.2 million.  The city proper numbers should reflect an annexation of around 5,000 people that were officially annexed today.  As of this past December 1st, the State Legislature that is dominated by rural conservatives effectively killed future annexations of populated areas by Texas cities.  Cities will now only be able to annex populated areas if the residents in the target areas vote for annexation.  A vote for annexation will not happen very often as it means a tax increase for residents already enjoying city amenities.