Austin- “Arrival of Oracle, Apple, Tesla deal new challenges to city’s struggle to stay affordable—and ‘weird’.”
“It’s now one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S.“
The following written content by Elizabeth Findell and Konrad Putzier
AUSTIN, Texas—A few years ago, some blocks of Austin’s South Congress Avenue featured a castle-themed wax museum and comic book shop, a neighborhood bar with $1 taco deals, an auto shop and, in season, a Santa Claus on horseback.
Then, as at so many other places in Austin, the construction cranes came.
Those blocks recently reopened with a strip of modern urban buildings with shops offering national brands from Lululemon to Le Labo perfumes. The $2,000+ private membership club Soho House and an Hermès store are on the way. Office tenants include accounting and consulting firm Deloitte and private-equity firm Tritium Partners LLC.
The project’s developer, Andrew Joblon, said he saw a need for national luxury brands in a place where more well-paid executives were coming. To Brad Somers, a manager of the Twomey Auto Works that was there 28 years before its lease was terminated, it was another reminder that some longtime Austinites can’t afford their own city any more.
“It pains me to drive by it,” he said.
Austin has tried hard to hang on to its particular culture over years of booming growth and popularity, which have attracted money and energy to the city but also brought rising rents and traffic congestion.
But the pace of change is accelerating as companies and remote workers relocate to what they see as the next tech metropolis, in some cases fleeing California. “Austin is a startup city,” said J.D. Ross, a general partner at venture-capital firm Atomic, who moved to Austin just a month ago from the San Francisco Bay Area. “Everything is growing quickly. The airport is adding new gates every year.”
Austin is now one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S., with a population of about a million, versus 675,000 in 2000.
Oracle Corp. is the latest company to announce a headquarters move to Austin, after a flurry of software and venture-capital firms in recent months. An Apple Inc. campus and Tesla Inc. factory are under construction on the city’s north and south sides. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk recently confirmed he too has moved to Texas. Read more from Wall Street Journal.
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