‘You can’t really get to know people just at a stuffy event around a table in a ballroom’

By Justin Sayers – Senior Staff Writer, Austin Business Journal

Jul 29, 2024

As a black tour bus from Austin rolled down U.S. 79 on July 24 toward farmland straddling Hutto and Taylor that’s now under development, Taylor Economic Development Corp. CEO Ben White took the microphone and pronounced to the group of 50 attendees: “What you are going to see are the building blocks for the next five to 10 years. It’s going to be a totally different city.”

His seatmate and fellow tour guide, Dave Porter, executive director of the Williamson County Economic Development Partnership, added, “This is what a quarter-of-a-trillion dollars of investment looks like.”

Over the ensuing 30 minutes, attendees got a drive-by view of some of the projects that make up that sum. They included the East Wilco Highway, where concrete beams rose above the highway; the Hutto megasite, where dirt was moving on a massive data center campus; the RCR Taylor Logistics Park, where a chemical plant is soon to rise alongside a building that’s going to house Tesla Inc.; and the crown jewel — the Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. complex in Taylor that seems to get bigger each day.

It was at that moment that the “tourists,” representatives from construction companies, architecture firms, engineering outputs, land brokers and more, whipped out their phones to take pictures and videos. They wore Taylor Swift-style friendship bracelets — a play on the city’s name — and held rubber ducks to celebrate the city’s high school mascot.

The tour of Taylor was the brainchild of business development consultant Glenn Hart — better known to some by his influencer moniker, “LinkedGlenn” — who said the idea was to enable those in the business community to better “appreciate the scale” of projects like Samsung’s factory, in which “every crane in Austin” is being used for its construction. He organized two other double-decker bus tours in downtown Austin for participants to see development there as well.

Ultimately, however, the goal was about networking in a way that encouraged participants to let their guard down, he said. Sponsors for the event included Key Project Solutions, CBRE, Windsor Group, Cushing Terrell and Austin Commercial.

“You do business with people you know, like and trust, as the saying goes,” Hart said. “You can’t really get to know people just at a stuffy event around a table in a ballroom.”

Porter, playing tour guide with White, noted that 90% of the economic development leads received when he was at Opportunity Austin a decade ago were office-related, compared to 10% manufacturing. Those percentages are now flipped, he said.

In an interview, White added that it’s important to let business leaders know the scope of what’s going on in the region.

“There are a lot of folks that work and live in the Austin downtown area, or the Domain area, or Westlake, and they don’t get up this way very often,” he said. “Every time they come out here, they’re amazed. Every time you see that 6 million-square-foot Samsung facility, you’re blown away. You’ve never seen anything that large before. The development that will occur around that over the next couple years, it’s going to be transcendent for Taylor, so it’s important for us to be able to tell that story.”

Gary Brown, owner and president of Windsor Group Realty, took part in the bus tour and said he was hoping for face-time with White and Porter. “They’re tough people to get in front of — in a good way,” Brown said. “They’re busy, and very influential.”

Over the last several decades, Brown has owned land in Williamson County that turned into hotspots after he sold it off to developers, such as Lakeline, Pecan Park, H-E-B in Leander and housing developments in Hutto. His firm owns land on the east side of the county and is shopping it around as potential locations for future projects, he said, such as six data center companies looking to come to the area.

Asked if he was able to accomplish what he set out to do on the trip, Brown flashed a smile and emphatically said yes.

The event also included lunch at distinguished Taylor barbecue restaurant Louie Mueller Barbecue on West Second Street. Third-generation pitmaster Wayne Mueller rattled through the history of the 75-year-old restaurant and how it has managed to stay open despite the ebbs and flows of the city around it.

Mueller told the group that the restaurant won’t change, although he described the business as exited about what’s set to come and the potential influx of new customers.

As the event wrapped up, attendees traded business cards and continued conversations at a happy hour at Lil Woodrow’s.

Before the event, during a huddle with White, Hart joked that because of all the construction, Taylor would have to change its high school mascot to the “Cranes.”

White responded back, “We have a saying here, ‘Once a duck, always a duck.'”

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