- The BG Reads
- Posts
- BG Reads 3.10.2025
BG Reads 3.10.2025
🟪 BG Reads - March 10, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
🟪 Discover how Bingham Group’s expertise drives results and
March 10, 2025
✅ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Chipmaker NXP ends Austin economic deal and $290M plans, seeks new state project funding (Community Impact)
🟪 Austin aims to jumpstart small-scale housing projects with rule changes (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 Greg Abbott won’t say whether he backs THC ban pushed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (Houston Chronicle)
🟪 US economic worries mount as Trump implements tariffs, cuts workforce and freezes spending (Associated Press)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
✅ Chipmaker NXP ends Austin economic deal and $290M plans, seeks new state project funding (Community Impact)
Global semiconductor company NXP backed out of an economic development agreement with Austin just over a year after City Council agreed to the plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the chipmaker's Southwest and East Austin campuses.
No local improvements or community benefits were completed before the deal was canceled due to issues with federal funding. Although that's not moving ahead, NXP has recently petitioned for millions of state dollars for other Texas projects.
Last fall, NXP terminated the economic deal with Austin that would've seen more than $290 million in upgrades and dozens of jobs added at its local facilities. The modernization and expansion was expected to add to the company's hundreds of millions of dollars of estimated annual economic impact.
NXP backed out due to complications with its application for federal CHIPS and Science Act funding. An NXP spokesperson confirmed the company had hoped to secure CHIPS program funding under a wider strategy to build its global footprint, a process that's now over… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Austin aims to jumpstart small-scale housing projects with rule changes (Austin Business Journal)
Homebuilders in Austin may have easier times trying to subdivide small residential projects after recent tweaks to city code. The City Council voted March 6 to change residential subdivision requirements for projects of five to 16 units on small lots in the city.
For properties of an acre or less, the move eliminates drainage studies and related requirements for project site plans if it's shown a property doesn't need grading and drains to a public right of way or existing drain system. The move also reduces the number of sites that need to participate in the Regional Stormwater Management Program or have on-site detention facilities. The changes could allow for more infill sites in the city with a higher number of units and help builders avoid costly drainage requirements.
Participating in the Regional Stormwater Management Program can cost some projects between $10,000 to $100,000. Another change would require 90-day approvals of site plans for residential infill projects if they meet city code standards. Changes to Austin’s residential subdivision process have been long advocated, because the requirements didn't previously differentiate between large and small housing projects. That resulted in every subdivision request being expensive and time consuming.
The revamped regulations, which will take effect May 23, are meant to further promote residential development and housing affordability in the city and are aimed at complementing changes under a housing affordability and development effort, called the HOME initiative, that was passed last year… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ COTA eyes tentative opening date for amusement park (Austin Business Journal)
A slate of new projects coming to the Circuit of The Americas aims to further its reputation as a tourism draw and family entertainment center beyond the Formula 1 race that spawned it.
The 1,500-acre property in the hills of Southeast Travis County is maturing to the point where its long-awaited amusement park should open later this year. Called COTALAND, the amusement park will have over 30 rides and be about 30 acres in size, without counting any parking lots, and it will have a two-story restaurant.
Over the years, COTA has diversified its track and property to include concerts, soccer games, the Peppermint Parkway lights show during the holidays, a year-round go-kart track and special events. But the amusement park is by far the most ambitious and costly maturation of the property.
Construction is ongoing with visible progress on two roller coasters, and there are tentative plans to open the amusement park in time for the next Formula 1 United States Grand Prix, which starts Oct. 19, said Stacy Weiss, vice president of theme park marketing at COTA… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
✅ With crumbling public health infrastructure, rural Texas scrambles to respond to measles (Texas Tribune)
Some 64 Texas counties don’t have a hospital, and 25 lack primary care physicians, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture. Twenty-six rural Texas hospitals closed between 2010 and 2020, according to a rural hospital trade organization, and although closures slowed in the years since, those still standing are often in crumbling buildings with few medical providers. Swaths of Texas have scant resources for public awareness campaigns. And they lack sufficient medical staff with expertise to provide the one-on-one education needed to encourage vaccination and regular visits to the doctor.
“We have a difficult time in our area finding pediatricians for our newborns,” said Sara Safarzadeh Amiri, chief medical officer for Odessa Regional Medical Center and Scenic Mountain Medical Center. “That’s a problem. If you can’t find a pediatrician, then when a serious question comes up, who do you ask?” Most of Texas’ measles cases are in unvaccinated school-aged children and are concentrated in the Mennonite community in Gaines County. Cases have also been confirmed in eight other counties spanning Dallam near the Oklahoma border down to Ector, south of Gaines… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Greg Abbott won’t say whether he backs THC ban pushed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (Houston Chronicle)
Gov. Greg Abbott declined to endorse Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s THC ban on Thursday, saying he needs more information about how lawmakers propose a prohibition that would criminalize a fast-growing cannabis market in Texas. Asked whether he had concerns about how the ban on intoxicating hemp products would impact thousands of licensed retailers and hundreds of growers and manufacturers across the state, the Texas Republican said lawmakers are wrestling with the “pros and cons” of a prohibition. “
It’s the kind of thing that we're looking into,” Abbott said at a press conference in Austin. “We need to see more information about what the legislators agree is the correct pathway forward.” The ban is among Patrick’s top priorities this session. Abbott’s comments came after dozens of THC consumers and business owners pleaded with senators to abandon the plan during a hearing on the proposal earlier this week. The bill, SB 3, would ban unregulated products like gummies, candies and drinks with high levels of THC.
The bill’s author, state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, has blamed retailers for taking advantage of a loophole in a 2019 farm bill by selling intoxicating products under a statute that was meant to allow for hemp textile production.
Senators are also considering a companion bill that would expand Texas’ compassionate use program, allowing more licenses to sell medicinal THC products and new satellite locations that could serve populations outside of major metro areas. Abbott in the past has supported some marijuana decriminalization efforts, saying "small possession of marijuana is not the type of violation that we want to stockpile jails with."
Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued cities that opted to decriminalize the drug. Abbott on Thursday held a press conference to celebrate Texas winning the Governor’s Cup, an award recognizing economic development given by Site Selection magazine, for the 13th year in a row... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
✅ US economic worries mount as Trump implements tariffs, cuts workforce and freezes spending (Associated Press)
With his flurry of tariffs, government layoffs and spending freezes, there are growing worries President Donald Trump may be doing more to harm the U.S. economy than to fix it. The labor market remains healthy with a 4.1% unemployment rate and 151,000 jobs added in February, and Trump likes to point to investment commitments by Apple and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to show that he’s delivering results.
But Friday’s employment report also found that the number of people stuck working part-time because of economic circumstances jumped by 460,000 last month. In the leisure and hospitality sectors that reflect consumers having extra money to spend, 16,000 jobs were lost.
And the federal government reduced its payrolls by 10,000 in a potential harbinger of the alarm being sounded by the stock market, consumer confidence and other measures of where the economy is headed. Since January, the economic policy uncertainty index has spiked 41% to a level, 334.5, that in the past signaled a recession.
Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist and co-developer of the uncertainty index, said it’s unclear how this will play out, but he’s worried. “I have an increasing fear we will enter into what may become known as the ‘Trump recession,’” he said. “Ongoing policy turbulence and a tariff war could tip the U.S. economy into its first recession in five years.”
That last recession occurred under Trump because of the coronavirus pandemic. For his part, Trump seems comfortable with the uncertainty that he’s generating, saying that any financial pain from import taxes is a mere “disruption” that will eventually lead to more factories relocating to the United States and stronger growth. If Trump’s gambit succeeds, the Republican would cement his reputation as an unconventional leader who proved doubters wrong.
But if Trump’s tariffs backfire, much of the price would be paid by everyday Americans who could suffer from job losses, lower wages, higher inflation and, possibly, an injured sense of national pride… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Fed expected to cut rates in June as jobs data raises potential red flags (Reuters)
The Federal Reserve will head into its March 18-19 policy meeting with the labor market strong overall but showing some potential early signs of weakening, a development that could put the U.S. central bank in a tough spot if inflation remains high and the Trump administration's tariffs add to price pressures.
U.S. job growth picked up in February, the Labor Department reported on Friday, with employers adding 151,000 jobs. That's well above the monthly growth rate of 80,000 to 100,000 that Fed Governor Christopher Waller on Thursday said he would view as being a healthy level of job creation.
Waller and other Fed officials have said a strong labor market for now allows the central bank to keep its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range as it waits for more progress on inflation, which remains above the 2% goal.
But the latest jobs report also showed the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1% and the number of people settling for part-time work because they couldn't find a full-time position also rose sharply, pushing up a broader measure of unemployment known as the U-6 to 8%, the highest level for this measure of underemployment since October 2021… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
🟪 Discover how Bingham Group’s expertise drives results and
Copyright (C) " target="_blank">unsubscribe