In this week's issue:

  • Austin just annexed 2,614 acres east of downtown — twice the size of downtown itself — in a 45-year deal with a mystery Fortune 100 tenant who's building something big and isn't allowed to tell you what it is
  • The same council session that did the annexation also green-lit $1 billion in new gas peaker plants — voted on in secret, announced in confusion, confirmed only by one Statesman reporter
  • Texas Supreme Court ruled 8-0 today, calling out a trial judge's "deliberate effort to frustrate the State's appellate rights" — and the $8.2B Project Connect light rail just got a lot cloudier
  • Waymo suspended all Austin service yesterday — flooding incidents, a robotaxi chased by police through traffic cones, and now eight cities down in a single week
  • Tom Brady is opening a sports card store downtown next Tuesday and that's just a sentence that exists

Let's get into it.

Top Stories

Dog's Head: Austin Just Made Its Biggest Land-Use Bet in Decades

Austin City Council voted Thursday to annex 2,614 acres of east Austin terrain known as "Dog's Head" — named for a dog-head-shaped bend in the Colorado River — into city limits under a 45-year development agreement with Endeavor Real Estate Group, the Austin-based firm behind The Domain and Southpark Meadows. The site sits between US 183 and SH 130, north of ABIA, and currently generates zero property tax revenue for Austin. That changes in a very big way: city staff projects the deal will produce $3.5 billion in new property tax revenue over 30 years, roughly $2 billion more than if the land built out under existing suburban county rules. The anchor tenant for the whole project is a Fortune 100 company with an "advanced manufacturing project" planned — the company's identity is not being disclosed. Attorney Richard Suttle confirmed it is explicitly not a data center and not a military or defense operation; semiconductor manufacturing is a permitted use. A 308-acre sub-parcel called "Project Toaster" was also approved the same day for demolition and grading, with the LLC tracing back to Endeavor. Three potential Colorado River crossings are in the concept plan, one of which links directly to Tesla Road near Giga Texas. The agreement also permits autonomous car and boat testing, could tie into a future Capital Metro light rail extension to the airport, and includes 20% affordable housing commitments, 260+ acres of preserved parkland, and a 6.5-mile river trail. No building height limits, no lot size restrictions, and no impervious cover cap — Endeavor voluntarily commits to staying under 90%.

The scale of the deal is genuinely historic for Austin, but the process that produced it deserves scrutiny even from people who support the outcome. No city land-use or environmental commissions reviewed the framework before the vote. The council advanced this on a compressed timeline with limited public outreach, and final variance decisions under the agreement will be made privately by city officials, not through public zoning reviews. A Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) will be established, with the final financing plan due July 2026 — but TIRZ oversight includes members appointed directly by Endeavor. Critics raised the alarm: Monica Guzmán of Go Austin/Vamos Austin told council members they were "surrendering council authority for 45 years." That critique isn't nothing. A previous Austin TIRZ near 305 South Congress was struck down in district court after resident lawsuits — a legal precedent risk sitting directly in front of this project. Mayor Watson acknowledged imperfection — "My guess is none of us are going to consider this to be a perfect development" — but framed annexation as clearly better than allowing Endeavor to build suburban-style in unincorporated Travis County through an existing municipal utility district. Mayor Pro Tem Chito Vela called it "a tremendous opportunity for the city." They're probably right on the merits. But approving a 45-year, $3.5 billion deal without commission review, on a compressed timeline, in a city that just watched its last big TIRZ get killed in court, is the kind of governance shortcut that tends to look bolder in retrospect than it felt in the moment.

Sources: KXAN | Community Impact (May 21) | Community Impact (May 19) | The Real Deal Texas

Upcoming Events

  • CardVault Grand Opening — Tom Brady's Sports Card Store. May 27 at 259 W. 3rd St. downtown Austin — Brady's collectibles concept opens its 15th location in Austin's 2nd Street District with exclusive merch, immersive displays, and yes, Tom Brady is behind all of it.
  • Comedy Mothership. Joe Rogan's club at 715 Red River St. has shows running through June — check the site for lineups across the Fat Man and Little Boy rooms; open mic nights on Mondays and headliner weekends fill up fast.
  • Gary Clark Jr. Residency at Antone's. The Austin guitar legend is in the middle of an eight-show summer residency at Antone's Nightclub — June and July dates remain; tickets are moving quickly for one of the most celebrated musicians this city has ever produced.
  • Emo's Austin. The storied Red River venue has shows running every weekend — check emosaustin.com for the full calendar; it remains the heartbeat of Austin's live music underground.

Austin Just Secretly Approved a Billion Dollars in New Gas Plants

On Thursday, Austin City Council — acting in its role as the Austin Energy board — approved roughly $1 billion in new natural gas peaker plant capacity: 400 MW of new gas generation, plus 400 MW of new carbon-free energy contracts in the same vote. The gas plants replace what Mayor Watson calls "Nixon-era" units — older, dirtier peakers that will be phased out. The new units use half the fuel and produce half the emissions. Watson called them an "insurance policy" for extreme weather events when batteries and renewables fall short — a reasonable framing given that Texas nearly collapsed its grid in February 2021. The infrastructure rationale is sound. Texas is in the middle of an extraordinary power demand surge: ERCOT projects electricity demand will increase 147% by 2029, according to Austin Business Journal reporting, driven almost entirely by data centers, AI compute, and industrial expansion. That's not a hypothetical. It's the bill coming due for building the infrastructure capital of the country. Austin Energy already carries one of the highest carbon-free portfolios of any utility in the nation — this is not a retreat from clean energy, it's a hedge against catastrophic failure.

The decision is defensible. The process is not. The vote happened in executive session — a closed-door, public-excluded meeting. When the council emerged, Mayor Watson initially announced the item had been "withdrawn." Council member Mike Siegel said they had "voted to authorize the purchase." The city's own records apparently showed the item as withdrawn. The confusion was genuine enough that Statesman reporter Chaya Tong had to explicitly confirm — via her own reporting — that yes, the item did pass. No individual vote tallies were disclosed publicly. A watchdog account, @data_atx, noted pointedly that there is "no record of this vote" and speculated the secrecy was politically convenient given upcoming council races. Public Citizen Texas put it plainly: "If you're wondering how the Austin City Council voted to approve a potential $1 billion expenditure for Austin Energy, so is everyone else." Austin is building fast and building right. But approving a billion-dollar infrastructure commitment inside a closed session, announcing it wrong, and then letting one reporter confirm the outcome is a governance failure worth naming out loud — even when the underlying decision was the correct one.

Sources: Austin American-Statesman | Mayor Watson on X | @data_atx transparency thread | ERCOT demand forecast via ABJ

Weird Austin

One Thing

Austin annexed 2,614 acres and approved a billion-dollar energy contract in a single council session — both with real governance transparency questions hanging over them. The city is building at a pace that most places can only dream about. Whether the process keeps up with the ambition is the open question.

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Thanks for being here. Go build something.

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