ROUND ROCK, Texas — New Albany is bracing for the expected growth from Intel as it continues to build its facilities in Licking County.
There’s a saying that “you can’t pave your wave” out of growth. City leaders in Round Rock, Texas say they decided to embrace it.
This story is part of 10TV's "Boomtown" initiative — our commitment to covering every angle of central Ohio's rapid growth. This includes highlighting success stories, shining a light on growing pains and seeking solutions to issues in your everyday life.
“The only constant is change in a high-growth community,” said Brooks Bennett, who will take over as city manager in December after working for Round Rock for the past two decades.
“But you have to deal with that change in a positive manner,” Bennett added.
He would know. His father held the same role in the 90s and was instrumental in bringing Dell Technologies to the small town that is now one of the fastest-growing cities in America, according to Round Rock’s official website.
Admittedly, there were growing pains that Bennett said other boomtown cities like New Albany and elsewhere should take note of.
“When Dell came to town in the 90s, we did have significant roadway infrastructure issues and we had to battle through those,” Bennett explained. “We had to come up with funding and we had to partner with the State of Texas to fund right-of-way acquisition to build a toll road.”
Bennett credits collaboration with city leaders who had the foresight and a voting public who believed in the mission as critical pieces to Round Rock’s success that took decades to evolve.
“You know, the best time to build a road was 30 years ago. And the second-best time to build a road is today,” Bennett told 10TV’s Angela An during a visit to Austin, Texas in August. “Having that mentality of, ‘even if we're behind, we are playing a long game’ and we need to get moving and we need to have a government and we need to have a community that's willing to get stuff done.”
Dell Technologies has not stopped building since choosing Round Rock as its world headquarters in 1993. It recently extended its agreement with Austin for another 46 years, taking the partnership into the turn of the century. It’s a growth that has not gone unnoticed.
Round Rock High School now has 4,000 students and is just one of seven high schools in the city with a population today of 130,000. Brianna Berhane said she sees new students nearly every day.
“There’s a lot of new houses,” said Berhane, a senior at the high school.
“There used to be a ton of trees everywhere and now it's just a ton of shops,” said Emma Prillaman, who is also in her senior year.
Samantha Shaffer teaches at the high school. As the city has exploded in growth in the three years since she moved to Round Rock, Shaffer said it still manages to feel like a small town.
“It’s definitely a huge community, but even so it still feels really tight-knit,” Schaffer explained. “We have our homecoming parade coming in about a month and the kids just still do the hometown floats and they do a parade down the neighborhood and everyone comes out to see them.”
Bennett credits that hometown feeling with strategic planning that includes diversifying the types of businesses that wanted to call Round Rock home and mixing up housing from single-family homes to more density-focused apartments and condos.
“The other thing that we did in the late 80's was we passed a half-cent sales tax for property tax reduction,” Bennett said. “Any time anybody comes from out of town and shops here, it actually brings downward pressure on our property tax rate and that saves the average homeowner hundreds of dollars a year in taxes."
Along with Dell, Round Rock is home to other major employers such as Premium Outlets, IKEA and Kalahari Resort and Water Park. Bennett suggests other boomtowns “think big” and “plan bigger” so they’re not playing catch up as the growth arrives.
“Instead of planning to buy right away to build a four-lane road, you buy right away to build a six-lane road and you can be ready to get those done.”