Twenty-five miles outside downtown Austin is the rural, scenic hamlet of Dripping Springs and the future site of a Southern Land Company luxury community.
The 70-acre, 28-home project is planned for an undeveloped plot at the end of Silver Creek Road, near Treaty Creek Distilling, according to Austin Business Journal. Texas’ Hill Country region, in central Texas between Austin and San Antonio, has become a hotbed for projects as developers scramble to meet the growing demand for housing.
“It has all of the elements of quality and infrastructure and nature, and complements what we do,” Dan Hutts, president of SLC’s Hill Country Region homebuilding group, told the publication. “We really love the terrain, we love the Hill Country views, we love the lifestyle, and the overall demographics of Dripping Springs, the proximity to Austin, the amenities. It’s a natural fit for us.”
Hill Country’s explosive residential growth has been a concern for the Dripping Springs City Council in recent years. In November, the council adopted a moratorium on development so the city’s wastewater capacity and building codes could be updated to catch up with the growth. The moratorium has since been extended through mid-February.
SLC’s development began early enough to be unaffected by the moratorium. Infrastructure work is expected to kick off this September.
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Each luxury home will sit on a 1.5 or 2 acres and prices will start at $1.5 million, Hutts told the publication. Nineteen of the homes are planned along the banks of Barton Creek.
“We wanted to provide larger tracts of land out there that can fit into the Hill Country environment,” said Hutts. “We want to embrace the open space that we have out there.”
Tennessee-based Southern Land has about $2 billion of projects in the pipeline, according to the press release reported by the Austin Business Journal.
The company, which has projects across Colorado, Tennessee and North Texas, announced a major expansion into central Texas in October. It will focus on residential development in Hays, Burnet, Comal and Travis counties.
Building, planning, design and marketing will likely be covered by the company’s many subsidiaries. Brian Sewell, president and COO of Southern Land, told the business journal there is room to collaborate with local firms in the future. One, Doucet & Associates, has already been tapped to do the engineering.
“We always do that in communities that we work with,” Sewell said. “We find local resources and then we put our resources together.”
[Austin Business Journal] — Maddy Sperling