Since pulling out of his $44 billion Twitter deal, Elon Musk’s entities have been quietly expanding east of Austin in rural Bastrop County.
Last week, SpaceX filed an application to construct a 522,000-square-foot “shell building,” according to the Houston Business Journal. The application forecasts a cost of $43 million with an expected completion date of July 2023.
While the filing does not list SpaceX by name, it does use the address for the company’s test facility in McGregor, Texas — a town of fewer than 5,000 residents outside of Waco.
Representatives with SpaceX did not respond to HBJ’s request for comment.
Back in June, the Austin Business Journal reported that SpaceX had picked up dozens of acres in Bastrop County for something called ‘Project Echo.’
Bastrop has been a target for Elon Musk’s other companies as well. His tunneling startup, The Boring Company has been gobbling up large tracts of land in Bastrop County over the past year. County property records show that Gapped Bass LLC — an entity tied to Pflugerville-based Boring Co. — has grown its land holdings to more than 250 acres along FM 1209.
And, of course, another Musk company — Tesla — moved its headquarters to the Austin area late last year to its 4 million-square-foot Gigafactory.
Read more
— Maddy Sperling