AUSTIN | Economic Development

[ILUVSAT]

Originally Posted by undergroundman

Austin-based Oracle considering $1.2 billion expansion in Nashville

https://www.statesman.com/story/busi...on/7222597002/

It's interesting that at one point, Elison said the Austin campus will eventually employ up to 10k people. It currently only employs 2,500 people, with an announcement to open a campus in Nashville that will employ up to 8,500. Added together, it's 11,000 employees. Were those 8,500 initially meant for Austin?

I wonder if Oracle is having second thoughts about Austin. Shots rang out at Fiesta Gardens, across the river from the campus, earlier in the month during a car club meet while families celebrated Easter at the park. Kxan reported that residents at a nearby high end condo had been complaining about the car club meetings for some time. And then add to that, the homeless mess on Riverside. There have been shootings and assaults that have occurred within that homeless camp.

Ultimately, Oracle has a responsibility to provide a safe environment for its employees. Kxan also did a piece on employees working at local shops on Riverside and how the homeless camps have impacted them. One female Sally Beauty employee said she's constantly dealing with shoplifting and felt unsafe walking to her car without an escort every night. If Oracle wants their employees to live and work late around their campus, it's got to be a safe environment. The southeast area has always been a crime center in Austin. I kinda think Oracle thought their presence would turn that around a lot sooner than it has.

1) Employees are still in the dark with regard to their "new" flexible work policy (i.e., remote). Nothing has changed at their Redwood Shores campus. And nobody there has been asked to relocate - yet. How is this going to affect the population of a corporate campus? Who knows!?!

2) The Nashville campus, according to Oracle documents, is to employ 2,500 people by 2027 and "up to" 8,500 by 2041. Oracle has a number of "major" hubs throughout the world. This is a new one and has no affect on the vision for its Austin campus.

3) One doesn't wake up one morning and haphazardly decide to relocate a Fortune 500 company from one locale to another. Oracle made the HQ move through much deliberation and thought. Nashville's hub announcement is not Oracle rethinking the HQ move.

4) The citizens of Austin are about to decide what to do with the homeless camps - in May (I believe).

[freerover]

I don't think the homeless plays into Oracle's decision at all. If it's anything Austin related then I would think it would be the worry about a labour shortage with Tesla/SpaceX moving in and possibly another Samsung plant but I think that ship has sailed.

[N90]

The article linked never says the Nashville move has anything to do with Austin at all. So why are people reacting with all this doom and gloom? In fact the article clearly mentioned that Oracle is reducing its presence in Silicon Valley. They don't mention a word about this being a response to anything in Austin. Oracle is a global multinational corporation, they're allowed to expand in other cities if they want to or need to. It doesn't mean that they're stalling growth in Austin, it just means that they're high on other cities as well as Austin.

Chill, guys. It's going to be fine.

[clubtokyo]

Like for real. Google has a huge headquarter in Silicon Valley and yet they will have two towers in Austin. It does not mean SV is dead to Google. Folks are way overreacting to this article. As N90 said chill!

[JAM]

Originally Posted by undergroundman

Austin-based Oracle considering $1.2 billion expansion in Nashville

https://www.statesman.com/story/busi...on/7222597002/

It's interesting that at one point, Elison said the Austin campus will eventually employ up to 10k people. It currently only employs 2,500 people, with an announcement to open a campus in Nashville that will employ up to 8,500. Added together, it's 11,000 employees. Were those 8,500 initially meant for Austin?

I wonder if Oracle is having second thoughts about Austin. Shots rang out at Fiesta Gardens, across the river from the campus, earlier in the month during a car club meet while families celebrated Easter at the park. Kxan reported that residents at a nearby high end condo had been complaining about the car club meetings for some time. And then add to that, the homeless mess on Riverside. There have been shootings and assaults that have occurred within that homeless camp.

Ultimately, Oracle has a responsibility to provide a safe environment for its employees. Kxan also did a piece on employees working at local shops on Riverside and how the homeless camps have impacted them. One female Sally Beauty employee said she's constantly dealing with shoplifting and felt unsafe walking to her car without an escort every night. If Oracle wants their employees to live and work late around their campus, it's got to be a safe environment. The southeast area has always been a crime center in Austin. I kinda think Oracle thought their presence would turn that around a lot sooner than it has.

Thanks for the update. I'd guess Oracle is just spreading the wealth. Some folks like Nashville region of the world, others Austin. Need both to keep attracting talent.

As far as the KXAN story, yep, if you live and work down town, especially in a ground floor retail store open to the public, you see all of this in a totally different light. Especially the ladies.

[StoOgE]

The idea that Nashville feels safer than Austin tells me some of y'all haven't been to Nashville.

[ILUVSAT]

Originally Posted by StoOgE

The idea that Nashville feels safer than Austin tells me some of y'all haven't been to Nashville.

^^^Ding! Ding! Winner winner hot chicken dinner!

[KevinFromTexas]

Originally Posted by StoOgE

The idea that Nashville feels safer than Austin tells me some of y'all haven't been to Nashville.

Yep. Austin had 48 murders in 2020 - the highest since 1991 when we had 49. There were 35 in 2019 and 2018. Nashville had 109 murders in 2020. That's up from the 84 they had in 2019 and 88 in 2018. So, yeah.

Austin - 950,807 city population - 2019 - 319 square miles - 48 murders in 2020.

Nashville - 694,144 city population - 2019 - 504 square miles - 109 murders in 2020.

Even adjusting for Nashville's larger city proper area and adding the metro numbers for Austin in a 5 county area that covers 4,280 square miles, we still only had 68 in the metro.

[AusTxDevelopment]

Originally Posted by undergroundman

Ultimately, Oracle has a responsibility to provide a safe environment for its employees. Kxan also did a piece on employees working at local shops on Riverside and how the homeless camps have impacted them. One female Sally Beauty employee said she's constantly dealing with shoplifting and felt unsafe walking to her car without an escort every night. If Oracle wants their employees to live and work late around their campus, it's got to be a safe environment. The southeast area has always been a crime center in Austin. I kinda think Oracle thought their presence would turn that around a lot sooner than it has.

While this is all 100% true, Oracle's campus in SE Austin is kind of a closed ecosystem. SE Austin isn't very walkable. Oracle's campus is private space with private security and surrounded by apartments that are either owned directly by Oracle for employee housing, or that are 90% leased to Oracle employees. They have multiple on-campus cafes, outdoor spaces and a big fitness center so employees don't have to venture off-campus if they don't want to. Unless they walk across the street to the Town Lake hike and bike trail employees are not among the campsites like downtown workers are. The retail strip centers around SE Austin get the brunt of the vagrancy and theft.

[ATX2030]

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/n...d-auction.html

As Samsung weighs where to build a $17 billion semiconductor plant, two sites in the Phoenix area that sources said are under consideration are about to be auctioned. This huge economic development project is being watched from around the globe — whatever happens in Arizona will be closely watched here in Austin.

[ATX2030]

https://www.kvue.com/article/money/e...d-73de61fef568

Home goods e-commerce company Wayfair on Wednesday announced that it will be opening three new engineering offices and hiring 1,000 people later this year. One of those offices will be in Austin, offering up 200 new engineering jobs.

[psychlotron]

Originally Posted by ATX2030

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/n...d-auction.html

As Samsung weighs where to build a $17 billion semiconductor plant, two sites in the Phoenix area that sources said are under consideration are about to be auctioned. This huge economic development project is being watched from around the globe — whatever happens in Arizona will be closely watched here in Austin.

So Austin is still in the running? There was speculation that the winter storm and power outage fiasco knocked us completely out of the game.

Sorry if the article gives those details. ABJ paywall gets me every time.

[We vs us]

Wayfair opening a satellite office here, and hiring 200.

From the ABJ:

Home decor giant Wayfair to open office in Austin and make 200 tech hires

By Brent Wistrom – Editor, Austin Inno, Austin Business Journal
Apr 21, 2021
Online home decor shopping platform Wayfair Inc. is branching out from its Boston roots and opening offices in Austin, the Bay Area and Toronto — three of the hottest tech hubs in North America.

Overall, the publicly traded company plans to hire about 1,000 people for engineering roles across the new offices. That includes about 200 positions for the Austin office over the next year, including software engineers, infrastructure engineers, product managers, experience designers, analysts and data scientists.

Wayfair has already posted 15 jobs for its Austin location, including head of machine learning engineering, executive assistant, software engineer and product manager roles. It was not immediately clear where Wayfair's Austin office will be, and company representatives couldn't be immediately reached on the morning of April 21.

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/n...ech-hires.html

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by psychlotron

So Austin is still in the running? There was speculation that the winter storm and power outage fiasco knocked us completely out of the game.

Sorry if the article gives those details. ABJ paywall gets me every time.

Arizona was always on their list of potential sites for the plant. The speculation that the winter storm knocked Austin out of the running is foolish. It comes from people who don't understand that a one time event will be a small factor in such a large decision making process.

[freerover]

Originally Posted by paul78701

Arizona was always on their list of potential sites for the plant. The speculation that the winter storm knocked Austin out of the running is foolish. It comes from people who don't understand that a one time event will be a small factor in such a large decision making process.

There is no such thing as a one time event. We can expect a deep bad freeze once a decade and it's going to get more frequent.

[ILUVSAT]

Originally Posted by freerover

There is no such thing as a one time event. We can expect a deep bad freeze once a decade and it's going to get more frequent.

Small cold blasts are one thing. Arctic freezes that last over 160 consecutive hours is another. And, yes, there is such a thing as a one-time event. In this case, no two natural events are ever exactly the same.

If power grids in the north central and north east part of the U.S. can figure it out - so should those running the grid in Texas. I believe that is what the State legislature is trying to solidify now. Those elected individuals received a lot of heat from their constituents (and businesses) over this.

Let's not forget the fact that those involved with the grid refused to winterize (or at least winterize properly). They were warned about this in 2011.

[urbancore]

Originally Posted by psychlotron

So Austin is still in the running?.

My source, very recently, confirmed Samsung chose Austin.

[ATX2030]

Originally Posted by urbancore

My source, very recently, confirmed Samsung chose Austin.

Nice!

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by freerover

There is no such thing as a one time event. We can expect a deep bad freeze once a decade and it's going to get more frequent.

Originally Posted by ILUVSAT

Small cold blasts are one thing. Arctic freezes that last over 160 consecutive hours is another. And, yes, there is such a thing as a one-time event. In this case, no two natural events are ever exactly the same.

Of course it's possible for a rare freeze like that to happen again. Maybe sooner than later due to climate change. But. Come on y'all. You know exactly what I'm getting at. This past storm will cause very little, if any change to Samsung's decision process. There are other factors involved that will be more consequential to this kind of long term investment.

Originally Posted by ILUVSAT

If power grids in the north central and north east part of the U.S. can figure it out - so should those running the grid in Texas. I believe that is what the State legislature is trying to solidify now. Those elected individuals received a lot of heat from their constituents (and businesses) over this.

Let's not forget the fact that those involved with the grid refused to winterize (or at least winterize properly). They were warned about this in 2011.

Texas needs to fix this, yes. If they don't, it could definitely affect future business prospects. As mentioned, it appears that steps are being taken to fix this.

There seem to be a fair number of people here who have been rooting for Austin to fail here. Sorry to inform those that don't want to hear this, but it likely won't fail. Don't shoot the messenger.

[psychlotron]

Originally Posted by ATX2030

Nice!

Man, I hope this is true!