HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #21  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 4:23 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Brooklyn, NYC/Polanco, DF
Posts: 30,550
Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanImpact View Post
[B]The plan includes waiving 90% of property taxes for a decade, and 85% for the following 10 years. An incentive program that reduces the taxes Samsung would pay for schools is estimated to cost $314 million.
In exchange for a maximum of 1,800 new jobs in exurban sprawl, there will basically be no property taxes paid for 20 years, and the school tax burden will be reduced by over $300 million. So each new job will result in a 175k rebate in school taxes.

There has to be a better way.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #22  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 6:38 PM
llamaorama llamaorama is offline
Unicorn Wizard!
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 4,204
Quote:
Originally Posted by C. View Post
So.... par for the course.

The cookie cutter subdivisions is really a boomer thing. There is a strong movement these days from the younger generations that no one actually wants to live in that shit. It's just the only options available because that's what the land-use/comprehensive plans allow.

The real estate industry has noticed this trend. There is strong demand for walkable, mixed-use areas. Faux Urbanism if you will with those fake retail town centers with a little bit of housing. But I don't think we're going to continue to build the same way as we did in the 60s and 70s unless it's mandated by zoning.
Eastern Travis and Williamson counties do not have zoning. Unincorporated areas in counties in Texas can’t have zoning. Only home rule municipalities can have the powers needed to have a zoning ordinance. So Taylor and Hutto only in the relatively small areas they’ve annexed. Counties have minimal/no land use controls.

The real estate industry petitions to get quasi-governmental entities called special districts set up. These are taxing entities that exist for the purpose of either utilities, or fire protection. Unlike a city they don’t have an obligation to serve the public good, a comprehensive democratic structure, etc, and they don’t really have the power to pass ordinances AFAIK. This way their subdivisions don’t need to be in a city.

Millennial homebuyers aren’t “settling” for the suburbs. Not these kind, who are like 35 now. These are out of state transplants who moved to Austin because they wanted this lifestyle. These are bougie suburban minded and politically conservative people. Austin isn’t a “weird” or even mildly progressive or alternative place anymore. It’s just a bigger Raleigh-Durham with small scraggly trees and brown grass.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #23  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 7:41 PM
austlar1 austlar1 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Austin
Posts: 3,428
Quote:
Originally Posted by C. View Post
I wonder what percentage of the employees in this new facility will choose to live in the hip and trendy neighborhoods of Austin and make the drive out to Hutto and Taylor. Austin has seen explosive growth in condominiums and other higher density form of housing due to the strong desire for people to live there. I would think that this announcement today is only going to increase demand in those neighborhoods (but perhaps that's true for everywhere else, too; urban or not).

Would 20 percent of the new employees of this facility be living in Austin proper be too high of an estimate?
They won't be earning enough to live in "hip and trendy" neighborhoods in central Austin. If single, most of these employees will likely live in suburban apartment complexes. Married employees will bring home enough income (especially in a dual income household) to afford a modest far-suburban home in a cookie-cutter development that may, or may not, include some kind of faux urban town center.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #24  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 8:32 PM
TexasPlaya's Avatar
TexasPlaya TexasPlaya is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: ATX-HTOWN
Posts: 18,313
Quote:
Originally Posted by C. View Post
Yes but young families are not 100% of the demographics. There are plenty of singles, and families eschewing children to live the lifestyle they want to live. I know that the LGBTQ lead a lot of the early renaissance of cities since they were not concerned about school quality while all of the couples with kids flocked to the suburbs where the good schools were located. Things have since changed, but it get really annoying with the perception that everything must be planned around the traditional nuclear families with young kids. There are plenty of other types of households in the United States.
Well sure and things are changing but it’s not just a boomer thing or conservative thing.
__________________
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

"Such then is the human condition , that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbor" Voltaire
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #25  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 9:03 PM
3rd&Brown 3rd&Brown is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 2,331
Quote:
Originally Posted by llamaorama View Post
These are bougie suburban minded and politically conservative people. Austin isn’t a “weird” or even mildly progressive or alternative place anymore. It’s just a bigger Raleigh-Durham with small scraggly trees and brown grass.
This is an odd assertion.

Travis County had one of the largest vote margins in percentage terms for Biden over Trump than many of its peer cities. I want to say the vote margin was up there with Philadelphia and San Francisco, and maybe even higher than NYC (which isn't as liberal, on the national stage, as people assume).

Didn't one of the suburban counties also flip? Sure, the new arrivals probably aren't Bernie leftists but they're likely definitely center left and more than likely not white supremecist evangelicals fascists.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #26  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 9:19 PM
BG918's Avatar
BG918 BG918 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2002
Posts: 3,549
Well the Austin area certainly needed more economic development and jobs, not much going on there
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #27  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 9:24 PM
austlar1 austlar1 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Austin
Posts: 3,428
Quote:
Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown View Post
This is an odd assertion.

Travis County had one of the largest vote margins in percentage terms for Biden over Trump than many of its peer cities. I want to say the vote margin was up there with Philadelphia and San Francisco, and maybe even higher than NYC (which isn't as liberal, on the national stage, as people assume).

Didn't one of the suburban counties also flip? Sure, the new arrivals probably aren't Bernie leftists but they're likely definitely center left and more than likely not white supremecist evangelicals fascists.
Well, fast growing Williamson County (where this project is located) is not yet in the Blue camp with Travis County, although it has moved in that direction in recent election cycles. These "new arrivals" are not just Rust Belt refugees or Californians seeking cheaper options. New arrivals move to Williamson for the almost affordable housing, and it is a fairly convenient commute for Dell and Apple employees as well as existing Samsung employees. It is a very diverse demographic. There are a lot of South Asians and East Asians in the mix of people. This new chip facility is only about 12 or so miles from Samsung's existing campus in far north Austin. Point being, it is hard to predict future voting trends in this area over the next decade and beyond. This seems to me to be a kind of watershed moment in American politics, and old labels may not apply for that much longer.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #28  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 9:27 PM
Steely Dan's Avatar
Steely Dan Steely Dan is offline
devout Pizzatarian
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Lincoln Square, Chicago
Posts: 29,634
Quote:
Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown View Post
Travis County had one of the largest vote margins in percentage terms for Biden over Trump than many of its peer cities. I want to say the vote margin was up there with Philadelphia and San Francisco, and maybe even higher than NYC (which isn't as liberal, on the national stage, as people assume).
according to this awesome election 2020 chart that Manitopiaaa put together, of the 50 largest MSAs, Austin was #11 in terms of Biden share with a +27.3.

and of those 50 largest MSAs, austin was in fact the 2nd bluest non-coastal one in the nation, trailing only chicago (+32.3). Denver was 3rd on that score with a +25.8.

so yeah, definitely not an overall conservative place, especially considering its location in the interior of the nation.
__________________
"Missing middle" housing can be a great middle ground for many middle class families.

Last edited by Steely Dan; Nov 24, 2021 at 9:50 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #29  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 9:59 PM
austlar1 austlar1 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Austin
Posts: 3,428
The attached link gives a pretty good post election night summary of voting trends in Williamson and Hays County, the two fastest growing Austin area suburban counties. It also discussed Biden's narrow win in Tarrant County, which is home to Fort Worth. Democrats had a good night, but it is not necessarily a sure thing for them going forward.https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/sou...lipped-to-blue
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #30  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 10:31 PM
mhays mhays is offline
Never Dell
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 19,748
Quote:
Originally Posted by IluvATX View Post
According to Abbott, the facility will create over 2,000 tech jobs, thousands of indirect jobs, and a minimum of 6,500 construction jobs.

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/texa...nt-on-tuesday/
Construction jobs are counted differently. Even as a construction PR guy, I don't really understand it. It's not a total number of jobs at any time, which would be dramatically less.

My understanding is it's more like the number of workers who touch the project at some point, including the supply chain. Many will just be involved briefly, like a few days at a mill hundreds of miles away.

Meanwhile the 1,800 is apparently only the onsite permanent jobs. There you have to ADD to come up with the real figure. Starting with the supply chain for the factory, the jobs multiplier you get when national/global dollars are added to your economy....
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #31  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 11:10 PM
C. C. is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 3,014
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays View Post
Construction jobs are counted differently. Even as a construction PR guy, I don't really understand it. It's not a total number of jobs at any time, which would be dramatically less.

My understanding is it's more like the number of workers who touch the project at some point, including the supply chain. Many will just be involved briefly, like a few days at a mill hundreds of miles away.
You're thinking rationally about something that has more in common with the art of propaganda than statistics. If these press releases were more honest, they should just estimate how many construction hours will be generated by the project.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #32  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 1:32 AM
AviationGuy AviationGuy is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Cypress, TX
Posts: 5,315
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
That wouldn't even be 400 employees. Chip factories have fewer employees than a typical office building. This factory will employ 1,800 people.

Austin proper has a huge geography, and is mostly newer sprawl. I don't doubt some of those employees would live in Austin proper.
Agree. Fortunately, getting to Taylor/Hutto isn't difficult from central Austin, at least where I am close to Koenig Ln/290. I can get to the 130 tollway from my Allandale neighborhood in less than 15 minutes. From there, it's a breeze to the 79 cutoff, and a short drive to Taylor/Hutto. I can be there in 30 minutes because there's no need to be on I-35. Of course, that's all as of the present. Another easy route from where I live is Mopac/Mopac tollway to 45 to 130. It's people who end up having to get on I-35 who are going to have serious commute problems. There are a lot of people in Austin proper who would end up in that predicament.

From here in north central, I can get to the new Tesla plant in 25 minutes, even though it's almost at the airport. I just go over to 130 from here and it's a piece of cake. Again, that's now. I happen to be located, simply by luck, in a part of the city that has easy access to both Tesla and Samsung.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #33  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 1:42 AM
JManc's Avatar
JManc JManc is offline
Dryer lint inspector
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Houston/ SF Bay Area
Posts: 37,783
Quote:
Originally Posted by AviationGuy View Post
Agree. Fortunately, getting to Taylor/Hutto isn't difficult from central Austin, at least where I am close to Koenig Ln/290. I can get to the 130 tollway from my Allandale neighborhood in less than 15 minutes. From there, it's a breeze to the 79 cutoff, and a short drive to Taylor/Hutto. I can be there in 30 minutes because there's no need to be on I-35. Of course, that's all as of the present. Another easy route from where I live is Mopac/Mopac tollway to 45 to 130. It's people who end up having to get on I-35 who are going to have serious commute problems. There are a lot of people in Austin proper who would end up in that predicament.

From here in north central, I can get to the new Tesla plant in 25 minutes, even though it's almost at the airport. I just go over to 130 from here and it's a piece of cake. Again, that's now. I happen to be located, simply by luck, in a part of the city that has easy access to both Tesla and Samsung.
Probably a lot of commuting to/from Round Rock, Georgetown and Pflugerville though. I don't know how bad 130 gets in rush hour but I wouldn't want to make the trek from Austin.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #34  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 1:51 AM
AviationGuy AviationGuy is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Cypress, TX
Posts: 5,315
Quote:
Originally Posted by llamaorama View Post
Eastern Travis and Williamson counties do not have zoning. Unincorporated areas in counties in Texas can’t have zoning. Only home rule municipalities can have the powers needed to have a zoning ordinance. So Taylor and Hutto only in the relatively small areas they’ve annexed. Counties have minimal/no land use controls.

The real estate industry petitions to get quasi-governmental entities called special districts set up. These are taxing entities that exist for the purpose of either utilities, or fire protection. Unlike a city they don’t have an obligation to serve the public good, a comprehensive democratic structure, etc, and they don’t really have the power to pass ordinances AFAIK. This way their subdivisions don’t need to be in a city.

Millennial homebuyers aren’t “settling” for the suburbs. Not these kind, who are like 35 now. These are out of state transplants who moved to Austin because they wanted this lifestyle. These are bougie suburban minded and politically conservative people. Austin isn’t a “weird” or even mildly progressive or alternative place anymore. It’s just a bigger Raleigh-Durham with small scraggly trees and brown grass.
Don't know where you live, but the Austin I live in has green grass (at least in spring, early summer, and fall), and lots of large, beautiful oaks. We also have the very scenic west Austin hills. Can't say the same for Taylor/Hutto, which are located in a farm belt with no natural beauty. Tesla's general area along 130 has some nice hills or rolling terrain and some woodsy areas mixed in with more open areas. Tesla is close to the edge of the Bastrop area pine forests, and also oak forests that stretch to Columbus and beyond.

Politically, the city of Austin is still quite weird, and consistently votes Democratic (just about every precinct, including formerly GOP precincts like Northwest Hills). The suburbs, such as Williamson County, used to be solidly red, but are mixed now. My old neighborhood in Williamson County was solidly red when I lived there, but is not that way at all now.

High tech industry tends to bring with it a lot of progressives or moderates, although that doesn't apply to everyone, of course.

Last edited by AviationGuy; Nov 25, 2021 at 2:03 AM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #35  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 1:59 AM
AviationGuy AviationGuy is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Cypress, TX
Posts: 5,315
Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc View Post
Probably a lot of commuting to/from Round Rock, Georgetown and Pflugerville though. I don't know how bad 130 gets in rush hour but I wouldn't want to make the trek from Austin.
Currently, if you get on 130 in Austin, it's not a bad commute up to the 79 cutoff. I've done it even in "rush" hour. But as I mentioned, that's currently (there's not much development). I don't know how long before that commute gets to be difficult, though.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #36  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 2:21 AM
llamaorama llamaorama is offline
Unicorn Wizard!
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 4,204
I think fast-forward 30 years East Austin will resemble Houston. Montopolis like area where it turns into Del Valle and Webberville gives off the same vibe that Aldine or Greenspoint does in Houston. It will be a really diverse, working class low-density area with quite a bit of trailers and other eclectic housing. Then beyond that it's all going to be like Cypress or Katy style somewhat more expensive master planned subdivisions with HOA's that will be nice but also just kind of blah.

Quote:
Don't know where you live, but the Austin I live in has green grass (at least in spring, early summer, and fall), and lots of large, beautiful oaks. We also have the very scenic west Austin hills. Can't say the same for Taylor/Hutto, which are located in a farm belt with no natural beauty. Tesla's general area along 130 has some nice hills or rolling terrain and some woodsy areas mixed in with more open areas. Tesla is close to the edge of the Bastrop area pine forests, and also oak forests that stretch to Columbus and beyond.
Yes I am aware. I know what central Texas looks like. I was just being a bit hyperbolic in my post. I grew up west of the Killeen-Temple area which is a bit more hill country than most of Austin but essentially the same as the western half of the metro and like an hours drive from Austin(we'd go to Lakeline Mall and stuff on the weekend). Our house was on a hill with a limestone cliff of sorts forming the back end of the lot and prickly pear would come up spontaneously.

Taylor and Hutto are in the Blackland Prairie which is today a mix of rich agricultural land and oak forests and would have been a savannah before Europeans arrived.

The balcones escarpment being the dividing line between these two regions. This agricultural belt intersected by rivers is partially why the I-35 corridor is a string of larger towns and cities.

Last edited by llamaorama; Nov 25, 2021 at 2:34 AM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #37  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 3:14 AM
Shawn Shawn is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Tokyo
Posts: 5,935
Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanImpact View Post
From Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...p?srnd=premium

The plan includes waiving 90% of property taxes for a decade, and 85% for the following 10 years. An incentive program that reduces the taxes Samsung would pay for schools is estimated to cost $314 million.

In addition to those abatements, the state is giving Samsung a $27 million grant from its Texas Enterprise Fund, which is aimed at luring projects that create jobs. The company could also get help with the construction and operation of the facility, such as exempting sales tax on materials used for building.
I don't understand why this doesn't get more attention. Aren't property taxes essentially the only municipal funding vehicle with scale in Texas? 20 years of Texas tax payer-funded welfare for a Korean company? This seems so un-Republican in principle, but totally par-for-course in practice: welfare for already-wealthy corporations (I guess even non-American ones now), but no welfare for poor Americans.

I promise you this: no American company would ever -ever- receive such state-sponsored support in South Korea.

So what's next on Patriotic, God-Fearing Texas' list, 20 years of no taxes for Huawei, Gazprom, and the NSO Group to set up shop?
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #38  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 3:38 AM
austlar1 austlar1 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Austin
Posts: 3,428
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawn View Post
I don't understand why this doesn't get more attention. Aren't property taxes essentially the only municipal funding vehicle with scale in Texas? 20 years of Texas tax payer-funded welfare for a Korean company? This seems so un-Republican in principle, but totally par-for-course in practice: welfare for already-wealthy corporations (I guess even non-American ones now), but no welfare for poor Americans.

I promise you this: no American company would ever -ever- receive such state-sponsored support in South Korea.

So what's next on Patriotic, God-Fearing Texas' list, 20 years of no taxes for Huawei, Gazprom, and the NSO Group to set up shop?
Well, if any of those outfits want to invest $17 billion locally, they'd probably get some serious consideration. Keep in mind the Samsung project is going up on UNDEVELOPED acreage in a far ex-urban location. This is land that is not throwing off much tax revenue at present. There will be a ton of ancillary development in nearby communities such as Taylor and Hutto as well as new development in as yet unincorporated areas nearby. All of this additional development will be taxed normally. Add to the mix a few thousand new jobs paying "middle class" wages and benefits, jobs that are always sorely needed by the "missing-out middle" in this modern economy that seems sometimes to only benefit the highly educateed, the highly skilled and the wealthy. In the immediate short term, there will also be lots of very well paying jobs in the construction industry. Samsung used mostly union labor to construct their original Austin fab (a multi-billion dollar affair that seemed unimaginably huge at the time of construction just a decade or so ago), and I suspect that they will do the same in the new facility. Union or non-union, these construction jobs are a good thing. I think Austin/Travis County made a mistake by not offering Samsung the kind of concessions that they wanted in order to build the new project next to the current Samsung factory in Austin, but the political sentiment in Austin was against making too many concessions. In the end Austin will still get bragging rights with regards to a $17 billion fab being built right up the road. I kind of wonder what Samsung is going to do with the extra land it acquired adjacent to the existing Austin plant. Could it be possible that Samsung is going to create a US HQ operation on this site? Is this how rumors get started? My bad!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #39  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 3:41 AM
kingkirbythe....'s Avatar
kingkirbythe.... kingkirbythe.... is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 2,595
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawn View Post
I don't understand why this doesn't get more attention. Aren't property taxes essentially the only municipal funding vehicle with scale in Texas? 20 years of Texas tax payer-funded welfare for a Korean company? This seems so un-Republican in principle, but totally par-for-course in practice: welfare for already-wealthy corporations (I guess even non-American ones now), but no welfare for poor Americans.

I promise you this: no American company would ever -ever- receive such state-sponsored support in South Korea.

So what's next on Patriotic, God-Fearing Texas' list, 20 years of no taxes for Huawei, Gazprom, and the NSO Group to set up shop?
Welcome to neoliberalism.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #40  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 4:05 AM
KevinFromTexas's Avatar
KevinFromTexas KevinFromTexas is offline
Meh
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: there and back again
Posts: 57,324
Quote:
Originally Posted by austlar1 View Post
It's not like they were going to build this thing downtown. Anyway, Hutto is already cookie-cutter subdivisions. I'd rather have this thing out in the far reaches of the Austin metro than closer to town. The horrible congestion will arise mostly during construction of this beast. The employee headcount is only projected to be 2,000 to 2,500.
The whole east side of the metro is a clusterphuck. I babysat my sister's kids out in Del Valle over the weekend so my sister and brother in law could go see Ghostbusters Afterlife, and we had forgotten that weekend was the weekend of the Rolling Stones concert at COTA. The traffic was absolutely insane. It looked like everyone in the city was trying to get out. We passed a CapitolMetro bus that was standing room only.

I've also had my fill of cookie cutter suburbs for a while. They're sold their house in Del Valle and are building a new one in Cedar Creek, but right now they're renting while it's being built. While their old house was actually pretty nice, the yards were tiny, there were no trees, the HOAs are Nazis, and the neighborhood is pretty blah. I spent several nights over the last month there spending the night, and during the day while also staying there, I felt like was on a deserted island or a small patch of green in the desert. It's very isolated - being a few miles east of the airport. The rental house they're in now is downright awful. On the first night of helping them move in, my brother in law said he already hated it. That place has a decent yard, though, those places have horrible drainage because of the clay like soil, so it basically floods your yard when it rains hard. It's clear to me that developers are just throwing up thousands of houses with little thought about the fact that people and families will be calling them home. Imagine a neighborhood where you have to drive to and from it to the city every day, the street is narrow, the driveways short and the yards narrow, so that even if you do have more than 1 car, you'll barely have room for it in front of your house, and anyone who is visiting will likely have to park down the street. What's interesting is, that house sits on a dead end street that overlooks a field and vacant land that continues on for 8 to 10 miles until you get to Cedar Creek.
__________________
Donate to Donald Trump's campaign today!

Thou shall not indict
Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 10:58 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.