I mean Dallas-Fort Worth, get with it! Can’t someone — Baxter Brinkman, Jerry Jones, Troy Aikman, Mehrdad Moayedi — spare 100 acres up north? Southfork? Westlake? Somewhere?
According to Austonia, who in turn received the news from a tweet, a rancher north of Austin in Williamson County is offering Elon Musk free land for him to move Twitter’s headquarters from San Francisco to Texas, should he desire.
Twitter’s headquarters is on Market Street in the heart of San Francisco. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the headquarters has remained empty with employees encouraged to work from home. Twitter’s (current) CEO, Parag Agrawal, has encouraged employees to work from wherever they like — office every day, at home, or hybrid. If about half of Twitter’s employees show up to work, that’s a lot of pricey real estate in one of the world’s most pricey real estate cities. In fact, Musk has suggested turning the headquarters into a homeless shelter!
Twitter accepted Musk’s offer to buy the controversial social media platform for $44 billion on Monday, which then prompted Musk’s biggest Texas fan, Gov. Greg Abbott, to immediately invite him to move its headquarters to the Lone Star State and join three of Musk’s other companies: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring company.
So Jim Schwertner — president and CEO of Schwertner Farms and a rancher, pilot, former regent Texas A&M University, Director National Business Aviation Association, Wright Brothers Master Pilot — made an offer to Musk he really shouldn’t refuse.
I love this guy. He wears a big hat and actually has cattle. He oversees farming and ranching on 20,000 acres of land. According to the Houston Chronicle that’s:
— the equivalent of about 74 football fields — just north of Georgetown, according to Austonia’s Andrea Guzmán. He said that the move would be a “win-win for everybody,” adding that a business like Twitter would bring a lot of jobs and boost the economy.
I know the area well, a prelude to the Texas Hill Country, east of I-35. Schwertner, whose name sounds like he might be from Fredericksburg, says it’s a good idea because the area is exploding with Samsung coming to Taylor, and “we want to be part of this explosive growth.” It appears that his ranch also sports an event center and an 8,000 square foot ranch house with a Texas-sized great room.
The guy is so serious he reiterated his offer on Wednesday via Twitter, of course, and said his gesture is serious “to help the citizens around Williamson County.” No word yet, as of this writing, whether Elon Musk has taken notice but hey, in the instant world of Twitter, a deal could be underway even as I type away. Might even happen overnight.
