TAYLOR, Texas — Visit any boomtown in America – Nashville, Denver, Austin – and you’ll hear similar stories of housing crises, traffic jams, and soaring home prices.
10TV traveled to another boomtown – Taylor, Texas – where Samsung is building a $17 billion semiconductor facility.
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.
“We’re on the map,” said Taylor Mayor Dwayne Ariola. “When we announced two November's ago, I had people in Australia and Hawaii calling me or texting me.”
Ariola said he took notes from neighboring boomtowns like Round Rock to see which best practices would benefit Taylor, which houses 17,000 residents, the most.
“Get ahead on your infrastructure, your water and wastewater lines, north, south, east and west so that it's easier,” Ariola added. “Don't put the burden on yourself. Put the burden on the developers like, 'Hey, we will help you develop up but pay for that infrastructure ahead of time and we'll try to pay you back in abatements in some shape, form or fashion.'”
10TV wanted to know whether the city of New Albany – which is slightly smaller in population than Taylor – is ahead or behind on that concept given Intel’s projected start date in 2027.
“None of us really expected a project the size of Intel, so we have a lot of work to do, but again, everyone is rowing in the same direction,” New Albany Mayor Sloan Spalding told 10TV in early September.
Spalding said highway construction along the state Route 161 expansion is months ahead of schedule and a lot of effort right now is going into improving infrastructure like roads, sewers and water lines.
To help New Albany survive the growth and prevent it from getting swallowed up by the influx of newcomers, city leaders started to buy up land.
“When Intel was announced, there was a concerted effort on behalf of the state of Ohio, the city of New Albany and our development company, the New Albany Company, in trying to acquire enough land to make sure that all the suppliers and the various entities were going to support and Intel had sufficient land to go to,” Spalding explained.
He also added how important it is to diversify which types of businesses New Albany wanted to call home that went beyond the traditional retail and tech.
“There's a whole lot of land out there that is available for development, whether it's residential, commercial or retail,” said Spalding. “The tech growth has really been the thing that's gotten the news so to speak. But you know, biopharmaceutical has taken off a lot and we have a lot of prospects that are calling looking for additional space right in our region.”
That strategy in Taylor has helped keep housing costs low enough for families looking to escape the high mortgages of Austin, the capital of Texas.
Allison Ditto is the operations manager for Talbot Commons, a pocket boutique hotel in the heart of Taylor and the first new hotel downtown in more than 100 years.
“I came to Taylor because I wanted to buy a house. I'm a single mother. I have two teenage boys and I had a budget of $260,000 which is not enough to buy literally anything in Austin,” she told 10TV’s Angela An during a recent visit to central Texas.
Ditto said she’s excited to see the growth that will only help her build a better future for her children.