‘A Texas utopia’: Elon Musk is building a town in Central Texas
The Real Deal reported on Musk’s new real estate venture in early February, referring to it as a “neighborhood” created in partnership with homebuilder Lennar. The idea was to erect 110 homes in Bastrop County, where the Boring Company has a large — and expanding — presence. Called “Project Amazing” — because of course it is — the tract of 70 acres near a bend in the Colorado River would be used to house employees of his companies with locations in Central Texas, including the Boring Company, Starlink, Tesla, and SpaceX.
“That’s not even going to touch his needs,” Matt Holm, a Compass real estate agent and president of the Tesla Owners’ Club Austin said. “There’s thousands of homes needed, not hundreds.”
Enter: Snailbrook.
According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, that’s the name of a town that Musk intends to incorporate in Bastrop County. The article describes meetings between Musk, his employees, landowners, and real estate agents as ones in which the billionaire wants to create, “a sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River, where his employees could live and work.”
Called Snailbrook, a reference to the Boring Company’s directive to employees to build machines that “move faster than a snail,” the site encompasses the 110-home site previously reported by the Real Deal, plus more land. The exact amount of land Musk owns in Central Texas is still up for dispute, with the Journal reporting that his companies have purchased “at least” 3,500 acres in the Austin area in the last three years. But the same story also notes that officials and real estate agents have indicated that Musk owns closer to 6,000 acres in the area.
The site apparently already has homes on the property, a pool, an outdoor sports area, a gym, and signs that read “welcome, snailbrook, tx, est. 2021.” According to the Wall Street Journal story, streets called Boring Boulevard, Waterjet Way, and Cutterhead Crossing have already been approved by the county and a home on the property will become a Montessori school.
Among those Musk has apparently consulted on Snailbrook: Kanye West, West’s architectural designer, and his own ex, the singer Grimes.
Chap Ambrose, a Bastrop County resident interviewed at length by MySA for a story about the Boring Company’s practices adjacent to his home last year, told the Journal that he thinks the company is once again operating under-the-radar, seeking to ask forgiveness rather than permission with its ambitious plans.
“They want it to be secret,” he said. “They want to do things before anyone knows really what’s happening.”
The county took a more measured approach.
“They’re very respectful of us,” Adena Lewis, Bastrop County’s director of tourism and economic development, told the Journal. “But they’re in a hurry.”
