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- BG Reads 3.17.2025
BG Reads 3.17.2025
🟪 BG Reads - March 17, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
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March 17, 2025
âś… Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 WilCo officials take off with Central Texas Spaceport Development Corporation (Community Impact)
🟪 They needed 20 years — it's been 20 (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 DFW population surges but it no longer leads nation (Dallas Business
Journal)
🟪 Houston police directed to call ICE on undocumented immigrants with deportation orders (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Trump’s New World Order tests the dollar (Wall Street Journal)
Read On!
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[CITY OF AUSTIN]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
âś… WilCo officials take off with Central Texas Spaceport Development Corporation (Community Impact)
Williamson County commissioners approved the creation of the Central Texas Spaceport Development Corporation at a March 11 meeting.
The Central Texas Spaceport Development Corporation, or SDC, is a partnership with Burnet County, officials said. An SDC is a public, private or public-private partnership that develops, manages and operates a spaceport, said Aurthur Jackson, chief economic development officer for the city of Cedar Park.
Spaceports are specialized launch and landing facilities for spacecraft, rockets and satellites, he said.
While there are six key functions to an SDC, Jackson said Williamson and Burnet counties will focus on:
Infrastructure development
Economic development
Partnerships and funding
Innovation and workforce development
“This is an exciting opportunity to help further space exploration initiatives in those two counties,” Precinct 2 Commissioner Cynthia Long said.
“As a geek that grew up in Houston with the space program, this is super exciting today.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ They needed 20 years — it's been 20 (Austin Business Journal)
Two decades ago this month, ABJ reported "the Mueller mixed-use project is open for business." There were no homes, no shops, no children's hospital, no parks or a kids museum — and its famous farmers market hadn't flourished. Twenty years ago, developers were ready to start in earnest perhaps the city's most ambitious redevelopment to date.
The old Robert Mueller Municipal Airport was ready for its makeover, and by "open for business," California-based developer Catellus Development Corp. was saying it's ready to start negotiating with tenants and selling parts of the 711-acre site to other developers.
It was pitched from the start as a 20-year endeavor — one of the city's biggest dives yet into the idea of mixed-use development; places where people live, work and play all without the need for a car. And indeed it took all of two decades to get it done, and actually there's still a bit more to be built.
Mueller has about 14,200 residents, a figure that's forecast to swell to more than 16,000 once finished, according to Brian Dolezal, Mueller's spokesman. He worked for Catellus pretty much since the start of Mueller's rise… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… SXSW shrinks as indie venues contemplate competitiveness (Austin Monitor)
Last week, advocates and leaders in the independent music venue community gathered during South by Southwest to discuss how those thin-margined businesses can improve their chances to stay in business. A few days later, news came out that the festival will shrink by two days next year and do away with the music-specific weekend that was a link to the event’s start as a showcase for live music in Austin.
The panel Small Stages, Big Impact: Saving Indie Stages for Artists was organized by the National Independent Venue Association, a group that formed during the Covid-19 pandemic with the help of several Austin music venue owners and operators. During the conversation, NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker framed how hard it is for small venues to remain competitive in the face of large promoters such as Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
“It is really hard to break through in a space where there is such – some would say a lot of competition, some would say there’s not enough competition, especially when you have major companies with major marketing budgets,” he said. “Independent stages are festivals, venues, promoters, … small businesses and nonprofits that make up most of the live space, even though they’re not in the headlines every day and they don’t have billions of dollars in profits that are announced every quarter.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
âś… DFW population surges but it no longer leads nation (Dallas Business
Journal)
The Metroplex is still a top destination for people looking to move but its appeal may be softening just a tad. Dallas-Fort Worth experienced the third largest population gain among metropolitan areas last year, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. That was down from first overall a year prior.
DFW added an estimated 177,922 residents from July 1, 2023 to July 1, 2024, to reach an estimated 8.3 million people, according to the federal data released March 12. That is a huge number — it equates to growing by roughly 487 people a day, including both migration and natural increases — and was even higher than the 2022-23 estimate, but other places are adding even more.
The Houston-Pasadena-Woodlands metro held onto its No. 2 spot for population gain with an estimated increase of 198,171 to reach 7.7 million residents. New York-Newark-Jersey City surged into the No. 1 spot with the estimated addition of 213, 403 for a total of 19.9 million residents.
The annual update of Census Bureau population estimates is a big deal for businesses that rely on such demographic data, from Realtors to site selectors to builders. The new numbers also provide the latest glimpse of the population wave that is reshaping North Texas… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Houston police directed to call ICE on undocumented immigrants with deportation orders (Texas Tribune)
Houston police are being instructed to call federal immigration authorities if they come across an individual who has deportation orders listed in the national crime database.
The new guidance to law enforcement in Texas’ largest city comes after the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials added 700,000 individuals with deportation orders to the National Crime Information Center database, which is used widely by local law enforcement across the country to track warrants, missing persons, stolen property and other criminal records.
The Houston Chronicle first reported on the guidance Friday, citing an email from Executive Chief Thomas Hardin. According to the Chronicle, the email said officers must call federal authorities when they discover a hit in the federal system. Hardin told officers to consult with federal authorities on how to handle the situation, including remaining at the scene for ICE to arrive.
"If that is not feasible or offered, our officers will select whatever option does not involve transporting the individual," Hardin wrote in the email, according to the Chronicle… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
âś… Democratic anger over 'Schumer surrender' shows party's deep divisions on
how to take on Trump (NBC News)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer faces a moment of turmoil after retreating from his initial threat to block a six-month government funding bill written by Republicans, a move that infuriated fellow Democrats in the House and liberal advocates — and raised questions about his effectiveness as party leader. Schumer, who has served as the Democrats’ leader in the Senate for eight years, has typically managed to find consensus within his party.
But he now finds himself on the defensive in one of the first major legislative fights of the second Trump administration, even drawing rebukes from longtime allies. In an extraordinary move, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of California, called on Senate Democrats to defy him and reject the GOP bill, while continuing to push for a shorter-term bill, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the government funded ahead of a midnight deadline.
“Democratic senators should listen to the women,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Appropriations leaders Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray have eloquently presented the case that we must have a better choice: a four-week funding extension to keep [the] government open and negotiate a bipartisan agreement. America has experienced a Trump shutdown before — but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse.” House Democratic leaders returned to Washington on Friday from a retreat in Leesburg, Virginia, to urge their Senate colleagues to vote against the funding bill.
Asked if it was time for new leadership in the Senate, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer's fellow New York Democrat, responded: "Next question." Highlighting the party’s identity crisis, liberals erupted with anger after Schumer announced Thursday he would vote to advance the GOP bill, with the co-founder of the activist group Indivisible, Ezra Levin, labeling it the “Schumer surrender” and urging Democratic senators to defy him… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Trump’s New World Order tests the dollar (Wall Street Journal)
President Trump has launched an unprecedented challenge to a geopolitical order that has prevailed for decades. One potential victim: the U.S. dollar. In just weeks, a steep increase in tariffs and uncertainty over trade have sparked fears that U.S. growth will slow.
At the same time, major shifts in U.S. foreign policy have led to a surge in optimism about the European economy—driving the dollar down sharply against the euro, sending stocks in Europe to records and spurring the biggest jump in German bond yields since just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The WSJ Dollar Index has declined seven of the past nine weeks, nearly erasing gains made since the Nov. 5 election. Such financial upheaval, if sustained, could have ramifications for everything from global investment flows to the direction of trans-Atlantic tourism.
For generations, U.S. political leaders have generally embraced the dollar’s primacy in the global financial system, in part because it has led to cheaper government borrowing.
The country’s spending on defense has helped bolster that position by driving up the budget deficit, financed in large part by foreign investors, who hold about a third of U.S. debt. Now, though, Trump and some of his advisers are making it clear that they want to expend fewer resources protecting allies. And they are saying they want a weaker currency to boost domestic manufacturing, by making goods cheaper to foreign buyers.
“When you look at these policies in a macro way, they have a method to them,” said Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. “The risk to the markets is dislocation in the short term. But I think our republic will be better off if we spend a few thousand dollars more for a car in return for having a workforce that can make things and can afford what they make.”
Many on Wall Street, however, fear the downside of such changes. A weaker dollar would make imports more expensive, boosting inflation and making it harder for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
Outflows from U.S. assets that depress the dollar could also drive down stock prices and lead to higher U.S. borrowing costs. Few believe that a huge decline in the dollar is imminent, partly because U.S. interest rates are higher than almost anywhere else in the developed world, promising continued foreign investment… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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