It’s a 40-minute drive from Austin to the quintessential Texas ranch city of Bastrop, the place cowboy hats, cowboy boots, and pickup vans drift alongside frontier-style storefronts and major streets whose format has modified little because the 1830s.
Individuals who dwell within the 12,000-person city, house to 131 nationally registered historic websites, describe it as a uncommon protect of Outdated Texas—a hunk of land that has managed to remain exterior of Austin’s grip and sprawling development.
However that’s altering, say the old-timers: Residence costs are rising; ranchland and open fields are being changed by gravel pits. And it’s getting tougher to discover a parking spot on the solely grocery retailer on the town. The crowds are beginning to skew youthful. There’s extra dwell nation music within the eating places. And on this yr’s election, some “Kamala/Walz” yard indicators popped up downtown alongside the “Trump/Vance” ones.
After which there’s Elon Musk.
The world’s richest particular person has made a rising homestead for his varied companies in Bastrop County. Starlink, a division of Musk’s SpaceX that makes web satellites, has a 500,000-square-foot manufacturing facility simply quarter-hour away from Bastrop’s historic downtown. Musk’s tunneling enterprise, the Boring Firm, has a analysis and growth heart, and social media website X (born in San Francisco as Twitter), will quickly break floor on its headquarters right here.
Since transferring into the world three years in the past, Musk’s firms have turn out to be a few of the largest employers in what has lengthy been thought-about a commuter city, and indicators of Musk-ification are spreading. Boring Firm staff sporting “Tunnel Mars” T-shirts stroll previous pickleball courts at Hyperloop Plaza. Contained in the plaza’s hangar-like construction, housing high-end normal retailer the Boring Bodega, a pub, and even a barber, classic Musk memorabilia (just like the $500 flamethrower the Boring Firm as soon as offered as a lark) are on show. And lessons at Advert Astra, a Musk-owned Montessori college whose title alludes to the SpaceX founder’s dream of interplanetary journey, are anticipated to start quickly.
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“I’ve been saying for months that it’s like a flying saucer landed…and a bunch of individuals received out,” Kay Rogers, an legal professional in Bastrop, advised me as we drove across the county in her automotive in March.
Questions stay, together with what number of Musk staff will really transfer to Bastrop, what precisely Musk’s grand plan (if any) is for the world, and what to anticipate from a larger-than-life character as well-known for entrepreneurial success as for impulsive habits and disrespect for sure guidelines. SpaceX, the Boring Firm, X, and Advert Astra didn’t reply to requests for remark.
With Austin persevering with to skyrocket as a tech hub, Bastrop was dealing with a inhabitants growth even earlier than Elon began constructing right here. However the Musk issue has thrown a wild card into what would possibly in any other case have adopted the everyday storyline of contemporary urbanization. Now, combined in with issues about inhabitants development, noise, and visitors is a knot of pleasure, marvel, suspicion, and apprehension about what’s to come back.
“I had folks name and say, ‘Congratulations on this,’” Becki Womble, president and CEO of Bastrop’s Chamber of Commerce, says about X’s forthcoming headquarters.
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There’s chatter about new jobs and larger ideas being dropped at eating places, however there’s additionally anxiousness about affordability for non-techies, frustration about transparency, and issues over the influence to the environment from Musk’s firms (considered one of which has already dug a tunnel underneath Bastrop’s farm-to-market street).
“I’m hoping and praying that he takes care of the atmosphere,” longtime resident Tracy Hipe, who owns an natural tree farm along with her husband close to a few of Musk’s amenities, tells me as we sit in a espresso store. “Our little tree farm is determined by that water, and he’s proper on the river.”
Musk himself doesn’t seem to go to the city fairly often: Locals and metropolis officers say they’ve but to cross paths with him. However nobody fails to pay attention to the Tesla Cybertrucks charging up on the Buc-ee’s fuel station or parked of their neighbors’ driveways.
“I’ve been saying for months that it’s like a flying saucer landed… and a bunch of individuals received out.”
Kay Rogers, an legal professional in Bastrop
Extra Teslas will nearly definitely be coming. At 888 sq. miles, Bastrop County is large enough to suit roughly 19 San Franciscos in its boundaries. What may go flawed?
“Time is cash”
When Mel Hamner, the commissioner of Bastrop County’s Precinct 1, arrived at work one morning in 2021, a customer was ready exterior his door in one of many darkish hallways of Bastrop County’s outdated courthouse.
The customer demanded to know why Hamner’s workplace had not but accredited an utility for a septic tank variance. The applying was for the Boring Firm, whose amenities had been past the attain of the town’s wastewater line, and Steve Davis, the Boring Firm president and considered one of Elon Musk’s right-hand males, had personally come for solutions.
Hamner, a no-B.S. Air Pressure veteran with a snow-white beard who opted to not run for reelection in November, recollects the encounter as indicative of the Musk enterprises’ modus operandi.
“Their tradition is ‘Time is cash,’” Hamner tells me. “They don’t let the grass develop underneath their ft.”
The tempo at which Musk’s firms transfer is probably their most defining trait to many native observers, who swear that the automobiles even drive sooner within the elements of city frequented by Musk staff. SpaceX is already including one other 700,000 sq. ft to the Starlink constructing that went up in 2023, and county planning paperwork counsel greater than 1,000 new parking areas can be added. Hamner expects the brand new X headquarters, which he believes can be about “4 to 5” tales, to be up earlier than lengthy. “On the pace that they go? This time subsequent yr, or mid–subsequent yr, it wouldn’t shock me to see a constructing there,” he says.
The frenzy of exercise is having a knock-on impact, drawing new retail and residential growth initiatives.
“With every little thing that’s coming in underneath Elon’s umbrella, the tempo of growth general has gotten extra aggressive—as a result of now there’s elevated competitors,” says David Renfro, the lead growth supervisor of Adelton, a master-planned neighborhood west of downtown Bastrop. “Elon offered an explosive burst to the make-up of Bastrop and what we’re going to see over the following 20 years.”
Certainly, of the 27 growth initiatives underway in Hamner’s precinct, solely three are affiliated with Musk.
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“Our grasp plans are all going by way of rewrites,” says Bastrop’s metropolis supervisor, Sylvia Carrillo, who has projected that 42% extra folks will pour into the town within the subsequent 5 years. The inhabitants of the broader county, which was 97,216 on the final official tally in 2020, is projected to just about double by 2050.
Bastrop’s first Chipotle restaurant is underneath building, and regional banks corresponding to San Antonio–primarily based Frost Financial institution and Henderson, Texas–primarily based VeraBank are opening their first branches. Musk staff are engaging prospects. “It’s definitely a rising part of our buyer combine,” says Rick Womble, govt vice chairman and president of Roscoe Financial institution’s Bastrop department (and, I later be taught, husband of Becki, from the Chamber of Commerce). “We might, after all, wish to see that enhance,” he provides.
Liana Walker, a Bastrop actual property agent, met with greater than 100 X staff this summer season at considered one of X’s places of work in Austin. The staffers, a part of X’s belief and security group, can be relocating to the corporate’s Bastrop headquarters, and Walker was there to pitch them on the deserves of dwelling in Bastrop as an alternative of simply punching in for work. To assist make the case, she had containers filled with Bastrop-themed notepads and stickers, guides to the city, and raffle baskets of things from native companies, together with med-spa present playing cards and oil-change vouchers.
Walker and her husband have already helped a handful of SpaceX, Tesla, and X staff discover houses within the space—a few of whom have since turn out to be mates.
However others aren’t feeling the neighborly vibes.
“They’re not making any effort”
Outdoors an empty movie manufacturing studio one night in March, dozens of residents from Bastrop County’s six main cities—which embody Utley, Elgin, and Bastrop—piled tender slices of brisket and slatherings of barbecue sauce onto white bread as they mentioned how their neighborhood was altering.
Chap Ambrose, a cowboy-hat-donning software program developer who lives up a dust street subsequent to the Boring Firm’s facility, had towed his grill and served dinner earlier than the principle occasion: an informational assembly with the Texas environmental regulator and a consultant from a rock-crushing firm.
Technically, the assembly was about an air allow for the corporate to mine within the space. In actuality, the group of farmers, neighbors, nonprofit staff, and activists had been stirred to motion due to the Boring Firm, which had already been cited for violations together with stormwater erosion and discharging oily water, each of which have been resolved.
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“I wish to be clear—we’re not against financial development and even mixture mining. You possibly can’t have one with out the opposite, however what we’re against is when the essential guidelines and greatest practices aren’t adopted,” Skip Connett, who runs a close-by natural neighborhood farm along with his spouse, stated on the assembly. “The Boring Firm—after they got here right here—they didn’t get an air allow like you are attempting to get.”
Issues in regards to the Boring Firm’s operations in Bastrop had been infected in 2022 when it utilized to dump practically 143,000 gallons of handled wastewater every day into the Colorado River, and, in line with some locals, didn’t interact with the general public in a listening to in regards to the matter. Some didn’t belief Boring to observe the principles and maintain the water clear—significantly as a result of it had been fined for dumping industrial stormwater with out a allow in Bastrop.
An area environmental group arrange a web site and wrote a letter to the environmental company over their issues about wastewater damaging the Colorado River—a key outside centerpiece and vacationer attraction for the city of Bastrop; they demanded a listening to.
Finally, Boring and SpaceX inked a take care of the Metropolis of Bastrop to increase a wastewater line to their operations, with an area utility firm and SpaceX sharing the associated fee.
Nonetheless, some members of the neighborhood felt sidelined by the ordeal, in line with Cheryl Lee, a member of the Bastrop Metropolis Council, noting complaints she heard that Boring’s consultant didn’t adequately reply questions on the atmosphere assembly about wastewater. “I don’t see the place they’ve engaged,” Lee says. “They’re not making any effort to hook up with the neighborhood.”
Hipe, of the tree farm, says what occurs to the Colorado River as Musk strikes in is high of thoughts: “That’s the most important concern—as a result of that impacts lots of people.”
A Texas empire
Bastrop’s trio of Musk firms represents only a sliver of an interconnected and ever-expanding constellation of companies that features $1 trillion carmaker Tesla (of which Musk is the CEO); the Tesla-owned photo voltaic vitality enterprise SolarCity; brain-chip implant firm Neuralink; AI developer xAI; and the training group X Basis.
Some are close by. You possibly can drive north from Hyperloop Plaza for about 20 minutes to the ability the place Neuralink is growing its brain-computer interface. Half an hour north of the plaza is Tesla’s 10-million-square-foot gigafactory, which manufactures the Cybertruck and Tesla Mannequin Y.
But when Musk has a blueprint to show Bastrop right into a Twenty first-century firm city, he has not revealed it.
A Wall Avenue Journal characteristic from 2023 had steered Musk wished to construct his personal city in a nook of Bastrop County. However no plans that grand appear to be underway. Whereas there are greater than a dozen little houses on the Boring Firm R&D property in a bit of neighborhood known as Snailbrook, plans drawn up a few years in the past to construct a brand new neighborhood with greater than 100 houses have been changed with a brand new, scaled-down model known as Snailbrook 2 that can embody 21 two-and three-bedroom homes close to Hyperloop Plaza, in line with property data. Neighbors seen Boring had begun digging holes for this challenge in November.
Even metropolis and county officers don’t know what number of Musk staff will finally come to Bastrop. Job adverts provide solely a tough indication.
SpaceX’s web site lists greater than 140 open jobs primarily based out of Bastrop, roles starting from architectural challenge managers, technicians, and antenna engineers to building managers and cooks. The Boring Firm has 44 open positions—for geotechnical engineers, technicians, and patrons. Sixteen youngsters are anticipated to attend Musk’s Advert Astra college in Bastrop, which he’s funding by way of a nonprofit group, in line with paperwork. And 4 college members have been introduced on employees, in line with supplies filed with Texas Well being and Human Companies.
With no centralized message coming from Musk Inc., and nobody emissary of his enterprise empire to liaise with the neighborhood, residents are left to guess—and fear—about how their hometown matches into the multibillionaire’s plans.
“I don’t assume there’s a veil of secrecy round what’s happening in any respect, however I do assume that there’s a normal starvation to know extra and to know extra—perhaps what these plans would possibly entail and the way that may influence us going ahead,” says Womble of Roscoe Financial institution.
Whereas locals are excited for the brand new jobs, for instance, there’s concern that a few of these new houses and developments are out of funds for locals whose salaries ($48,774 on common in 2022, in line with county knowledge) can’t compete with these of Musk’s engineers—and that the rise in taxes as property values rise is forcing locals to promote their houses and downsize. Zillow knowledge reveals that the median value of a house in Bastrop County has risen to $372,500 in 2023, up from $350,000 in 2021 when the Boring Firm arrived.
I don’t assume there’s a veil of secrecy round what’s happening in any respect, however I do assume that there’s a normal starvation to know extra and to know extra.”
Rick Womble, EVP and president, Roscoe Financial institution Bastrop department
Increasingly more RV or trailer parks are popping up round city as a lower-cost possibility for building staff, retirees, and retail and repair staff.
The builders are “bringing reasonably priced housing for folks from [Austin] that dwell over right here—[not] the people who have lived right here all their lives and have regular jobs,” Commissioner Hamner says, noting he’s seeing youthful people who find themselves making an attempt to get began being pushed into the trailer parks and RV communities, as a result of they both can’t afford to purchase a brand new house anymore, or can’t afford to pay the upper taxes on the house they already personal.
“What about our box-store staff… How can they afford a home on this financial system? They dwell in RVs and in [trailer] parks, and that’s unhappy,” he says.
“He doesn’t trouble me”
Bettie Buchanan, who has owned an RV park on the Colorado River, simply north of the Starlink facility, for the previous 18 years, echoes a few of her neighbors’ apprehension in regards to the altering instances. “The taxes on this park have gone means up. The homes have gone means up. It’s simply ridiculous,” she says.
However Buchanan, who’s 77 and whose great-grandfather used to personal the farmland the place Musk’s firms now sit, says that “whoever’s received the cash should purchase what they need.” She added: “I do know there’s some people who have complained about Elon Musk, however so far as I do know, he doesn’t trouble me, and I don’t trouble him.”
Once I visited Bastrop for the second time in mid-September, there was loads happening. The native historical past museum was recovering from a small flood that had broken a few of its assortment, and there was chatter about plans for a 546-acre studio heart opening in 2025 to supply Westerns and different movies. Town was additionally reeling from a scandal with its mayor, who had an affair with the top of the town’s tourism nonprofit and was accused of interfering in an investigation over misuse of metropolis funds. (The mayor’s legal professional stated no public funds had been ever misused and the mayor “didn’t try to cowl up something in regards to the public’s enterprise…He has publicly admitted and apologized for the affair.”)
What about Musk? He had but to be seen on the town by anybody I spoke to. However the ambivalence within the air about his presence was palpable.
Lizzie Chen for Fortune
SpaceX is among the largest paying members on the Bastrop Chamber of Commerce, and X arrange a gathering with the group in early October, in line with Chamber of Commerce CEO Womble. Hipe says her mates love taking their youngsters to Hyperloop Plaza. “You possibly can play pickleball for $1 an hour,” she says. And Hamner says that SpaceX has provided a few of its land to a county group for use for soccer fields in the event that they put fields and concession stands on it. What’s extra, none of Musk’s firms have requested for any tax abatements—which is relatively uncommon, he provides.
For a lot of locals, Bastrop will all the time be far more than Musk. However there’s a recognition that it’ll by no means be the identical. Whereas I used to be ready to fulfill Hamner exterior his workplace, I overheard him on a cellphone name, discussing some new Musk growth initiatives.
“Our quiet neighborhood is gone,” he stated flatly.
This text seems within the December 2024/January 2025 situation of Fortune.
