Elon Musk plans to build a “utopia” in Texas, an entirely new city on thousands of acres of farmland he recently purchased outside the state capital of Austin.
Land deeds and records show the extent of the project, and the billionaire and Twitter owner attended meetings with landowners and real estate agents in which he and his staff laid out his ideas for the project. The Wall Street Journal he calls “a kind of Texas utopia along the Colorado River” where staff could live and work.
Top executives at the Boring Company, the Tesla CEO’s tunneling company, considered locating the town in Bastrop County 35 miles from Austin, allowing Musk to regulate some issues in a municipality of his own and speed up the projects.
People familiar with the project said The newspaper that Musk and his executives want his staff in the Austin area, including employees of the Boring Company, SpaceX and Tesla, to be able to live in new homes at below-market rents.
There are already several modular homes, including a pool, an outdoor sports facility and a gym, according to Facebook posts and people familiar with the area.
There are signs that say, “welcome to snailbrook, tx, est. 2021”. The name Snailbrook refers to the Boring Company’s mascot – Gary the Snail.
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A general view of the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, USA, February 28, 2023
(REUTERS)
“Work Amazing”
Bastrop County Commissioners Court documents filed in January show there are plans to build 110 homes near Snailbrook.
Texas law states that a city needs at least 201 residents and approval from a county judge to be able to incorporate.
Gapped Bass LLC has filed paperwork to build 110 more homes in the planned town, calling it “Project Amazing.”
Adam Pashian, the Boring Company’s Corporate Controller, is listed in electronic records as the registered agent for Gapped Bass.
Documents filed with the Texas Secretary of State’s office also show that Gapped Bass has the same address as the Boring Company location in Pflugerville, and Boring Company President Steve Davis is listed as the manager. Austin American Statesman reported in July 2021 after Gapped Bass purchased 73 acres of land in Bastrop County in May of that year.
Officials have approved a number of street names, including “Boring Boulevard,” “Waterjet Way,” “Cutterhead Crossing” and “Porpoise Place,” county documents show. Austin Business Journal reported for the first time.
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A Bastrop County document shows the “Project Amazing” plans.
(Bastrop County)
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A Bastrop County document shows the “Project Amazing” plans.
(Bastrop County)
Bastrop County Commissioner Mel Hamner said at a meeting earlier this year that homebuilder Lennar, a Florida company, was working with the Boring Company on the project, according to the real estate news website. The real deal.
In January, Mr. Hamner told KXAN he believed the homes would be offered under a lease-to-buy scheme.
Bastrop realtor Jacki Short told KXAN that “you’re on the west side of Bastrop, on the east side of Austin. So it’s very easy for people to move around.”
“Really all of Bastrop is a pretty busy area,” he added.
They want it to be a secret
Computer programmer Chap Ambrose’s home overlooks the new Boring Company and SpaceX sites. He said The newspaper that he thinks “they want it to be a secret. They want to do things before anyone knows what’s really going on.”
County deeds and land records show that entities connected to Mr. Musk have bought 3,500 acres of land in the area around Austin over the past three years.
Musk owns 6,000 acres of land, the report says
Real estate and land officials told the paper they have been told by people close to the billionaire that he owns up to 6,000 acres, according to The newspaper.
Musk left California more than two years ago. He complained that it was a place of “over-regulation, over-recourse” and “over-taxation” in late 2021 in a podcast with the satire website The Bee of Babylon.
In Texas, there are fewer zoning laws and lower environmental and labor requirements, and it also has large tracts of lightly regulated land. The state also has no corporate income tax and no personal income or capital gains taxes.
The Texas plans include a private compound for Mr. Musk that can be built away from the city. People familiar with the plans said all land purchases have been personally approved by the billionaire. Many of the vendors had to sign non-disclosure agreements, The newspaper famous.
Elon Musk plans to build the city ‘Utopia’.
Local officials also said they had to sign similar agreements when they were told the Boring Company was coming to the area.
Boring has applied to state environmental authorities to discharge 142,500 gallons of treated sewage into the Colorado River each day, CHRON reported in October of last year.
“What he wanted from the city was speed”
Steve Adler, a Democrat, served as Austin’s mayor from 2015 until earlier this year. When he visited in 2020, Musk sought assurances that bureaucracy would not be a problem for his projects.
“What he wanted from the city was speed,” the former mayor said The newspaper.
Shortly thereafter, construction began on Giga Texas – a Tesla manufacturing plant – covering approximately 2,500 acres in Travis County, which borders Bastrop County.
County officials are “regularly hounded” by Musk’s staff
According The newspaperRobert Pugh, who previously served as Bastrop County’s director of engineering, complained to County Planning Commissioner Clara Beckett that employees were “regularly hounded” by staff and contractors for Boring and Starlink, which is part of SpaceX .
Mr. Pugh wrote last June that they wanted the county to “expedite and approve permit applications that are incomplete and do not comply” with regulations. He quit his job that month.
Boring Company staff could begin applying last year for homes with rents as low as $800 for two and three bedrooms, and if an employee is fired or quits, they must move within 30 days, the newspaper said.
The real estate website Zillow reports that the average rent in Bastrop County is about $2,295 a month.
“They are in a hurry”
The county’s director of tourism and economic development, Adena Lewis, told the paper that they “have a lot of respect for us,” but added that they are “in a hurry.”
He said the county’s small size may have appealed to the billionaire as it would give him “the ability to work with people on a direct level and not have tons of red tape.”
The independent has reached out to Tesla, the Boring Company, SpaceX and Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro for comment.