Bastrop is a town of 12,000 people with 131 registered historic sites, but it became Elon Musk’s “kingdom” when the world’s most powerful businessman, according to Fortune, arrived three years ago.
House prices are rising, farms and fields are being replaced by construction, there are more cars and more children.
Fortune reports that Bastrop’s economy has grown significantly thanks to Elon Musk, or rather, the billionaire’s companies that have moved here.
The world’s richest billionaire has built a series of offices for many of his businesses in Bastrop. From Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet project with a 152,000m2 production facility to the Boring Company project or most recently, the Twitter-X office that is about to break ground.
Elon Musk’s companies are now Bastrop’s largest employers, and there are countless images of the billionaire. Boring Company employees wearing “Tunnel Mars” T-shirts strolling through baseball fields, Tesla electric cars driving on the streets, and even a school called Ad Astra owned by Elon Musk to train interplanetary astronauts.
“It’s like an alien UFO landed in town and a whole bunch of different people came out of nowhere,” Bastrop attorney Kay Rogers joked about Elon Musk’s impact on the town.
According to Fortune, what Elon Musk’s plans are for Bastrop remains a secret, and there are no clear statistics on how many of the Tesla boss’s employees will come to the town.
However, Bastrop has truly become a construction site for Elon Musk as the population of this town has increased. The fact that the most powerful businessman in the world has placed many projects here has attracted countless companies and industries to come here to form a supply chain for Elon Musk.
Of the 27 projects underway in Bastrop’s District 1, only three are from Elon Musk, the rest are from follower businesses that want to form a supply chain for the Tesla boss.
Fortune reports that Bastrop residents are now talking about Elon Musk more than anything else. They worry about whether the world’s richest man hires non-tech workers, whether his projects pollute the environment.
Time is money
Despite his fame, Elon Musk rarely comes to town. Even local officials have never met the businessman.
This is understandable when Elon Musk values work efficiency and has too many projects to implement. Not to mention that the Tesla boss often has to travel with Donald Trump after winning the US presidential election.
“Elon Musk’s culture is ‘Time is money,’ and his employees never let things go too far,” said District 1-Bastrop Commissioner Mel Hamner.
Elon Musk’s Bastrop projects are reportedly moving at a rapid pace, with SpaceX adding 220,000 square feet to the old Starlink building, which is due to be built in 2023, and adding 1,000 new parking spaces.
In addition, Commissioner Hamner also expects Twitter-X’s office to be built here, bringing with it a series of new projects.
Chief planner David Renfro of the Adelton neighborhood in West Bastrop said Elon Musk’s projects have brought in a lot of retailers and real estate companies.
“With Elon Musk’s projects, the overall growth of the town has exploded because there’s more competition,” Mr. Renfro admitted.
“All of our master plans are being revised,” said Bastrop town manager Sylvia Carrillo.
The town’s population is expected to increase by 42% over the next five years.
The influx of workers and employees from Elon Musk’s projects is believed to be the main reason why Chipotle opened its first restaurant in Bastrop. A series of banks such as Frost Bank and VeraBank also opened their first branches here.
“Elon Musk’s employees are attractive customers and will certainly be a growing part of our customer base,” said Rick Womble, branch manager at Roscoe Bank in Bastrop.
Meanwhile, Liana Walker, a real estate agent in Bastrop, met with more than 100 Twitter-X employees this summer to talk about moving to Bastrop. She had to prepare a guide to the town to make sure Elon Musk’s employees felt comfortable and safe when they moved in.
A Kingdom in Texas
Fortune newspaper commented that Elon Musk is creating a kingdom in Texas by focusing his projects in easy-to-manage locations.
Elon Musk’s trio of Bastrop companies is just a small part of a growing list of suppliers and services that include Tesla’s $1 trillion electric vehicle business, Tesla-owned solar power company SolarCity, brain-chip implant company Neuralink, AI developer xAI and education organization X Foundation.
In Bastrop, residents are just a 20-minute drive from the Neuralink facility developing brain-implantable chips, and a half-hour drive north is Tesla’s 3.1 million-square-foot Gigafactory, where the Cybertruck and Tesla Model Y are made.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) claims that Elon Musk is looking to build his own town in a corner of Bastrop, but it seems that no similar plans have been made yet.
Although there are more than a dozen tiny homes on the Boring Company’s property in a small community called Snailbrook, they are still in their infancy.
SpaceX’s website lists 140 job openings in Bastrop, covering everything from project managers, technicians, antenna engineers to chefs. The Boring Company has 44 openings.
Elon Musk’s Ad Astra school in Bastrop is also enrolling 16 children with a completely different teaching mechanism, aiming to train interplanetary astronauts.
However, until now, Elon Musk or his projects have not officially announced to the indigenous community of Bastrop. Even local officials do not know how many employees will come here or what the billionaire’s plan for the town will be.
There are already some natives worried that Elon Musk’s projects will affect their lives.
For example, Zillow data shows that the median home price in Bastrop has increased from $350,000 in 2021 when the Boring Company arrived, to $375,500 in 2023.
Now, more and more electric car charging stations are popping up around town in place of gas stations, and more and more young people are worried about being pushed to the edge of the city when they can’t afford the skyrocketing housing prices.
In addition, Elon Musk’s employees being paid higher than other jobs will create income imbalance, increase the cost of living and affect the lives of local people.
“Housing prices have gone through the roof, it’s ridiculous,” complained Bettie Buchanan, who has lived in Bastrop for 18 years.
*Source: Fortune
