Part I Dell plant: growing without the pain
Cooperation among computer company, neighbors and city 'is the way it should work,' mayor says
by Jerry Mahoney, American-Statesman Staff
After 15 years as a neighborhood leader bird-dogging development in Austin, it was a first for Janet Klotz.
Dell Computer Corp., the world's fastest-growing personal computer maker, came to her for advice as it put together a proposal for a 570-acre manufacturing campus in Northeast Austin.
The company showed Klotz a list of attorneys who could help guide the proposal through City Hall and asked for her opinion. Dell hired the attorney recommended by Klotz, president of the North Growth Corridor Alliance.
During evenings and weekends over the next three months, Klotz and other homeowners who were worried about the project met dozens of times with Dell representatives in living rooms, a church and Pflugerville schools.
The result was a project that met the needs of the company, its new neighbors and the city, an unusual outcome in a city where development battles can go on for years and engender hard feelings.
Moreover, the cooperation between Dell and the City of Austin on what will become on of the biggest industrial sites in Central Texas sets a standard for growth, city leaders say. Austin's message: Work with us on all your projects and you will see a side of City Hall that shatters a decades-old reputation as anti-growth.
"This is the way it should work, when you have a project like this," said Mayor Kirk Watson. "We took action that will benefit the city in the long term."
The payoff for Dell was the Austin City Council's quick approval of the project early this month. More important, the city has agreed to act quickly on future manufacturing facilities on the campus. Speed is crucial to Dell, which wants to ship computers from the first 300,000-square-foot building by November.
Despite the time crunch, Dell did not try to throw its weight around, city officials and homeowners say.
The only criticism of Dell that emerged from more than a dozen interviews with representatives of homeowner groups and city officials stems from the company's urgency.
But the company's focus on the bottom line was tempered with a growing awareness of its responsibilities as a leading Central Texas company.
"While we need to preserve our ability to conduct business, we can still be good corporate citizens," said Kip Thompson, Dell's vice president of real estate who worked extensively with neighborhood groups on the project.
Residents were able to soften the impact of the project, which in time will transform a sparsely developed area of the city into a commercial, retail and residential center. They also gain from the city's agreement to speed up construction of roads and other infrastructure already planned for their area.
At the meeting when the City Council approved the campus on a 7-0 vote, Klotz said, "Thank you, Dell, for working with us on your proposed project. Welcome to the neighborhood."
The Northeast Austin campus is important to Dell because it will support -- for the region stretching from Canada to Argentina -- the company's assault on the lucrative market for powerful computers known as servers and workstations. A potentially huge market for Dell, those computers accounted for 11 percent of Dell's $12.3 billion in revenue in its just-completed fiscal year. The company is under intense pressure, much of it self-imposed, to remain the fastest-growing PC maker.
The background
Dell's success is all the more notable in light of two other proposed developments that drew strong opposition from neighbors and city officials.
Earlier this month, Motorola Inc. abandoned plans for an office building in the Circle C development in Southwest Austin after city officials and environmentalists warned of the risk to the Edwards Aquifer which feeds Austin's beloved Barton Springs.
Motorola will build the 225,000-square-foot structure in southern Williamson, County, on land where Apple Computer Inc. once planned a facility. Like Dell's campus, the site is within a large area called a Desired Development Zone where the city wants to steer growth. The zone, which is roughly east of MoPac Boulevard, is outside the environmentally sensitive region over the Edwards Aquifer.
On Thursday, the City Council approved a request by the Jewish Federation of Austin to build a community center on 40 acres in a well-settled Northwest Austin neighborhood. Some area residents, worried about increasing traffic and crowding in the neighborhood, strongly opposed the center. The final approval came with limits on the amount of traffic the center can generate.
While Michael and Susan Dell donated land for the Dell Jewish Community Center, Dell Computer is not involved in the project.
(continued in Part II)
From Austin American-Statesman, Sunday, March 29th, pages A1,14,15 |
