From Staff Reports
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is planning to build a modern-day company town for his employees located just east of Austin, where approximately 110 three-bedroom homes will lease for $800 per month. The new city will be called Snailbrook in Bastrop County.
Musk wants to provide his Austin-area employees, which include staff at Boring, electric-car maker Tesla, and his space exploration firm SpaceX, with affordable, brand new homes on thousands of acres of farmland beside the Colorado River, the Wall Street Journal reported first.
The idea is to create “a sort of Texas Utopia along the Colorado River, where his employees could live and work,” according to WSJ.
A ‘Utopic’ Master-Planned Community
The UK-based Daily Mail reported that homes would lease for $800 per month for a three-bedroom house. As daltxrealestate.com has reported, Austin’s real estate market is among the state’s least affordable places to live. An $800 lease is nearly unheard of in this booming Central Texas market.
The newspapers obtained developer plans for the master-planned residential community, filed in the Bastrop County Commissioners Court. They have already approved plans for streets called Boring Boulevard, Waterjet Way, and Cutterhead Crossing. County officials have also signed off on plans to build and run a Montessori school within Snailbrook town limits.
The county, however, has not yet received any application by Musk to incorporate the town, according to the paper. This would require at least 201 residents and approval from a county judge.
Buying Up Central Texas
Musk and his companies have bought at least 3,500 acres in and around Austin, though real estate agents and officials have said in past statements that the total is closer to 6,000 acres, the Journal reported.
News of Musk’s plans is the latest development in his ongoing focus on Texas as a hub for his business and manufacturing endeavors. After buying Twitter last year, Musk announced in late November that he’s considering building one of two possible company headquarters in Texas.
Musk opened his new Tesla factory dubbed Giga Texas in April last year. The sprawling plant spread across 2,500 acres of Travis County outside Austin is billed as the manufacturing hub for the Model Y and the future home of the Cybertruck.
In neighboring Bastrop County, his tunneling firm Boring is building a new warehouse, while SpaceX is building a 12-acre facility. The proposed Snailbrook ‘utopia’ for his employees is just a half-mile up the road.
A Curious Namesake
Snailbrook reportedly takes its name from Boring’s mascot, a snail named Gary — a reference to the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon character of the same name, the Daily Mail reported.
Texas has been home to several so-called company towns — a small city that is built for employees by a large employer. Nationwide, the most famous example is Hershey, Penn.
Today the small town of Thurber is an unincorporated community in Erath County, located 75 miles west of Fort Worth. But between 1888 and 1921, it was one of the largest producers of coal in Texas and the largest company town in the state, with a population of over 10,000.
