It’s election season…again, and in typical election season style, all the candidates are talking about economic development and pointing to a lack of this or that or the other as proof that the city and everyone in office is failing the electorate miserably. So I thought this would be a good time to set the record straight on what is fact, what is an interesting interpretation, and what exactly is going on in the city.
#1: Economic Development is Not About Restaurants & Retail – It’s About Resiliency
I want you to think about every recession you’ve lived through. What happens when times get tough? People cut back on their discretionary spending – meaning they are not going out to eat as much, not shopping as much, and not vacationing as much. If your entire local economy is based on producing sales tax through restaurants and retail, your budget is in deep trouble in the next downturn.
The goal of economic development is not to have a restaurant for every taste. The goal of economic development is to ensure stability and resiliency to your area. That means your efforts need to be diversified. Yes, restaurants and retail play a part, but they can never be your primary focus.
#2: What You Really Need is Jobs
People like to compare us to Cedar Park and what restaurants and retail they have. Cedar Park though, did not begin to attract the volume of restaurants and retail that they have now until they started focusing on bringing in primary employers. They did a study several years ago that showed that most of their population was leaving town during the day to commute to work. Their consultant told them they had to have parity between the people leaving town for work and the people coming in to town for the same purpose.
Having a lot of people living in an area is not sufficient reason for a restaurant to open. If everyone is gone during the day, that restaurant is going to struggle because they won’t have a lunch crowd. When you have a strong daytime population AND a strong evening population, restaurants will come all on their own because they know they can turn a profit. So going back to the example of Cedar Park, look at their big announcements over the years: it’s not “we’ve attracted Burger King” its “we’ve attracted Firefly”.
#3: And Those Jobs Need to Pay Well
This really ties in to #1 above. Your economy is not stable if your workers are all earning minimum wage. Yes, there is a place for minimum wage jobs in your economy, but when you’re looking to attract businesses, what you’re looking for primarily one a company that will employ people primarily above minimum wage.
#4: And There Needs to be a Variety of Industry
If you base your entire economy on one type of industry and that industry specifically has a downturn, not only do you lose those companies, but an outsized percentage of your population becomes jobless. Variety is not just the spice of life – it’s what stabilizes local economies. A well-rounded city has both white-collar and blue-collar jobs. It has people who manufacture, people who sell, and people who sit at desks.
#5: There’s One Time When You Break These Rules
If there is a retailer or restaurant that is so extraordinary, you think people will come from other places to get to it, that’s something worth going after. We love it when people from Cedar Park or Liberty Hill come spend their money here, because those sales taxes they pay are helping us to pay for our own parks and roads. Thank you visitors!
#6: Retailers Are Not Stupid
Think of any chain of restaurant or store that you like. I can guarantee you that there are people in that company whose entire job is figure out where the best and most profitable locations are going to be. They typically look at a lot of factors – how many people are in the area and what their interests are, how much money do they have for excess spending, what other retailers are in the area, and importantly, do they already have a store too close that would hurt from a new one opening.
They look at what is called the “trade area” – basically how far their shoppers are willing to come from. They don’t care about the geographic boundaries of a city – what they care about is making sure their customers are within so many miles of one of their locations. They want to ensure that when they build a store, it’s going to attract the highest volume of customers without hurting one of their other locations.
They also look at “site selection criteria” – a set of their guidelines for what they think makes for their optimal site. You can spot some of the trends for certain retailers: Walmart always looks for giant pieces of land near a major road. Walgreens looks for signalized intersections with lots of traffic. Torchy’s likes to be in a shopping center.
It’s not just retailers that have these criteria – it’s any business. Leander loses a lot of opportunities because we haven’t had vacant buildings available. You can probably think of several retailers who never build their own site, but will locate in a vacant space in a shopping center. That happens for industrial and office users as well – many of them want to focus on running their businesses and not learning how to construct their own building. Not having ready-made space hurts us much more frequently than the public realizes.
There are also logistics and supply chain considerations. That chain restaurant you really liked in New Mexico? Yeah they might do great out here, but it doesn’t make financial sense for them to start sending their trucks full of ingredients all the way out here for just a handful of locations. The same goes for that place you like in DFW – it doesn’t make sense to open up one or two locations hours away when you can expand your geographic boundary slowly, closer to the operations you already have in place.
Now That We Have a Baseline, Let’s Talk About What’s Happening In Leander
Brand New Locations for Every Type of Employer
This is where everything I just told you about attracting employers, having a diverse offering of industry, and having ready-made space available all come together. What Leander has accomplished the last year and a half has been breathtaking. These are the projects that have announced and are actually underway as we speak. They’re not luck or a mistake. They’re the result of our continued focus on true economic development.
Titan Development – 115 acres – Over 1,000,000 sq ft of business park – This isn’t just any business park – this is Titan. Titan develops gigantic, fantastic business parks and they’re well respected. If you’ve driven up 35 recently and seen the enormous industrial area on the west side of 35 as you leave Georgetown – that’s Titan. They’re investing $84 million here, which means we’ve demonstrated we are absolutely on the right track.
Leander Tech Park – 50 acres – 270,000 sq ft – This is Leander’s first tech park. It’s located on Highway 29, just west of Reagan. The front portion will be retail and restaurants to give us sales tax, and the rest is flexible uses for business.
Hero Way West – 16 acres – 227,200 sq ft – If you’ve driven Hero Way West lately, you’ve likely noticed the large construction project happening across the street from the new Shops at Hero Way. This development is three very large buildings for office, warehouse, and showrooms. The developers are very excited and expecting to open late this year.
St John’s Offices at Northline – 4 stories – 120,000 sq ft – This development is what’s called “Class A Office”. Class A is basically high end – these aren’t crummy little offices where everyone reports to their cubicle next to the wall. These are higher end, provide amenities, and make such an attractive presentation, it’s a good place to welcome clients. This is Leander’s first Class A office and is breaking ground in the next few months.
And Employers Who Are Constructing Their Own Buildings
Austin Shoe Hospital chose Leander as their new headquarters. They’ll be constructing their own 25,000 sq ft building and bringing their employees here. And we attracted our first Home Depot which should break ground in the coming weeks. We like Home Depot – their stores have considerable employees and when we talk about retail that can withstand a recession – Home Depot is a good bet.
A Revamp to Our Policies
We realized we had a large number of restaurants requesting incentive (tax dollars) to locate here. There are times in the city’s past when they’ve given away the farm to be able to say they landed X, Y, or Z. We believe that if we’re giving you any money, we need to know that at the end of the day, we’re going to make more than we give because that’s the responsibility we have with our residents’ hard earned money. So we created a policy that outlines the limited circumstances that we’re going to incentivize a restaurant. We call it the Destination Restaurant Incentive Program and it is for attracting restaurants that are new and unique so that we can bring in people from outside of Leander to contribute to our sales taxes.
We also have been working to shed the reputation of Leander being difficult to build in. We have improved our development processes, instituted some customer service standards, began holding developer forums, and of course if you’ve been reading this blog, you already know we made our sign ordinance much easier to navigate. These things count when a business wants to come here. Time is money and quality developers will go to places where they don’t need to waste their time.
But There’s So Much Retail & Restaurant Too
I’v heard the claim from a few candidates “there’s nowhere to eat in Leander” and it blows me away. I think maybe some people don’t realize that Leander is 40 sq miles and so maybe what they’re thinking is “the places I want to go to eat aren’t next to my neighborhood”. And I’ll admit, I can’t fix that. Many of our neighborhoods were designed in a way that will specifically keep anything other than ordinary local traffic away. If you live in Crystal Falls, your neighborhood was designed to be exclusive – to not have large traffic or outsiders coming in. The areas for shopping are small and focused on neighborhood needs – a smaller grocery store, dry cleaners, small neighborhood restaurants. Steiner Ranch doesn’t have a steakhouse because it can sustain itself on the neighborhood. It has a steakhouse because it has high value homes AND a ton of traffic on the main road.
But this isn’t the case all over town, so let’s talk about what’s opening or opened in the last 3 years.
Bar W Marketplace – This is the big shopping center with the HEB at Regan and 29. There’s a lot of confusion over this shopping center because the Post Office lists it as Georgetown. I can assure you, the entire shopping center is in the city limits of Leander – you can look it up for yourself on WCAD. This is Leander’s second HEB and includes their first HEB Fresh Bites: a convenience store at their gas station that has a staff preparing fresh, made to order tacos.
Also open or under construction in Bar W Marketplace are Leander’s second Whataburger, Leander’s first Chili’s, our 3rd McDonalds, Casa Garcia’s (in building D) Torchy’s, Mod Pizza, Hao-Hao, Tropical Smoothie, Jersey Mikes, and Wingstop.
The Shops at Hero Way – This shopping center just opened on Hero Way West and is already 100% leased. So far, residents are loving Cheba Hut and Jeremiah’s Italian Ice. PJ’s Coffee is set to open this month.
The Shops at Leander Ridge – This small center is on the north end of town near where 183A and 183 meet. Already open is Scooter’s Coffee, Wayback Burgers, and Beyond Pompeii Pizza.
Southbrook Station – This is the development just north of the Dairy Queen on Old 183, across from the CapMetro station. Announced tenants include Cava, Firehouse Subs, Paris Baguette, McAllister’s Deli, Crust Pizza, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Cold Stone Creamery, and Shipley’s Donuts.
Crystal Village – This is the one you see when you’re on the 183A frontage going north, right at Crystal Falls. This center hasn’t announced most of their tenants, but they have announced Culver’s and Southside Market and BBQ. Because this shopping center is on a major road, you can expect more sit down restaurants like we talked about above at Bar W Marketplace. Restaurants with waitstaff usually prefer to be along major roads to attract people from out of town.
I could tell you about new shopping centers and restaurants all day because we’ve barely scratched the surface. The developers of Bar W Marketplace are planning a second phase of that shopping center, just across the street from the first, south of Kaufman Loop. And there’s another large shopping center: Gateway 29 that’s planned across the street on the southwest corner Hwy 29 and Reagan. There are a number of shopping centers with restaurants and retail up and down the Reagan Corridor, so much so that Community Impact just did a huge feature on it.
There’s also the Leander Collective. It’s under construction on Old 183, just south of Leander Middle School. They just announced their first tenant: Summer Moon Coffee. There’s also Northline, which is making some changes to their plans and should begin announcing tenants later this year. Pointe 183 is going to be a large development just north of Northline and has also not announced their tenants. The Shops at Travisso are in negotiations, but have already announced a Perky Beans. And there are more developments I didn’t even list here.
I Want to Address Some of the Comments Made By Various Candidates
Because they’re deceptive and a slap in the face to everyone on our staff and council who has worked so hard these last few years to get us to a good place.
“Why Doesn’t Leander Have a Trader Joes?”
Trader Joes does not just put in a store because you simply ask for one. If they did, we would have gotten four of them long ago. Trader Joes is notoriously picky and slow to expand. They know that their customers are willing to drive further than for any other store. They’re open about the fact that they get hundreds of requests for stores every single day.
We have two developments that would be *perfect* for a Trader Joes. I can assure you that our staff has made attempts, the developers of both of those properties have been in contact for a few years, and I personally have made attempts. Trader Joes is a long game. I feel like we stand a great chance of getting one, but ultimately it’s up to them. However, if you want to help Leander to get one, they do consider customer requests, and being able to demonstrate that they have the support of the community would be helpful in our endeavor to get them here. Just go fill out their form online.
“I Heard Target is Going to Build in Liberty Hill Instead of Leander”
This one actually made me angry. I can dismiss the Trader Joes comment as naiveté, but this one is uses the start of a rumor to insinuate something is amiss and it was stated by someone who absolutely knows better. It’s said just to provoke a reaction out of voters for their benefit.
So first let’s talk about Target in Leander. I would love a Target in Leander, probably everyone would. But here’s the thing: Target built their store right at our border. They’re not going to build one three minutes up the road. There is a substantial chance that Leander will get a Target in the future, but if it were to come here, it would most likely be around 29 and Reagan so they don’t cannibalize their store in Cedar Park. But that’s great because as I told you about earlier, there are a few large shopping centers going up right in our city limits there.
I tried to substantiate this rumor online. There are no results on Google for a Target announced in Liberty Hill. There’s nothing about it on Target’s list of announced new locations. And it’s not listed as a current development project on Liberty Hill’s website.
One Final Note
I mentioned a few times about traffic volumes, or major roads or intersections. This fall will mark the beginning of the 2243/Hero Way expansion, a part of the Williamson County road bonds a few years back. This widening is going to make 2243 and Hero Way major roads that connect straight out to I-35 in Georgetown. This is major for Leander and will help us to attract the kinds of development we want. A major east-west route through town is something Leander has always lacked and has always hindered our development. A lack of ability to move east and west has meant that industry has trouble with their logistics here and it means that we lose a lot of the pass through traffic some of our neighbors have been able to benefit from. This will be a major correction in Leander and will spur development all along the new road.
And a Challenge for Each of You
I told you today about a LOT of restaurants in Leander. I didn’t even mention any of the ones that have already been here, loyal to our community – Southern’s Pizza and Sports Pub, Sharks Burger, Bright Restaurant & Bar, Blue Corn Harvest, The Republic, Moutons, Sky Asian Fusion, Brooklyn Heights, Umiya, Kai Sushi, Bella Sera, and a ton more I didn’t even cover. My challenge to you this week is to help our Leander economy: stop by a Leander restaurant this week, have a meal, and promote them on your social media. Let’s spread the word that Leander is a great place to open your restaurant while also supporting the many fantastic ones we have here.
Shop local,
