Elon Musk’s electric car manufacturing company Tesla recently leased a 682,000-square-foot speculative industrial building in the Austin Hills Commerce Center. 

The industrial building, which sits at 11801 Decker Lake Road, is set to be completed by January 2027. The project is helmed by Sansone Group and Principal Asset Management, and Musk’s Tesla is set to occupy the second phase of the development, according to reporting from the Austin Business Journal. The total size of the Austin Hills Commerce Center will be 1.4 million square feet when complete. It’s currently unclear what Tesla will utilize the space for. 

The development highlights the increased demand for massive industrial buildings in the Austin area. According to the outlet, there are at least a dozen speculative buildings that span upwards of 400,000 square feet in various stages of development, from finished to the early planning phases. 

Throughout the Austin Metro and across Texas, large swaths of real estate are rapidly becoming Musk’s playground. The world’s richest man has 2.2 million square feet of space around Austin on lease, and more than 10 million square feet that he owns and built. 

The Musk company portfolio includes a reported 112,000-square-foot sublease at the Seaholm Power Plant in downtown for xAI and the airport-adjacent Gigafactory, which spans over 10 million square feet. A $20 billion Terafab campus, that would feature 2 million square feet for research and development, is in the planning stages.

Bastrop County is home to several Musk-owned business’ buildings, most of which are placed along country road FM 1209. Musk is also building an Optimus humanoid robot production facility near the Gigafactory. Musk’s companies have spanned the Austin area’s entire suburban space, from as far north as Taylor to as far south as Kyle. 

Areas outside of Central Texas within the Musk companies include Cameron County, which is the home of Musk’s Starbase that functions as a manufacturing hub as well as the headquarters of SpaceX. The Starbase facility also includes the company’s primary launch site, which was recently relieved of local legal pressure centering around the company’s ability to shut down public Boca Chica Beach for launches. 

— Hunter Cooke

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AUSTIN (KXAN) — With the summer solstice in the rearview mirror, we are now losing about 20 – 30 seconds of daylight every day in Central Texas, adding up to around 20 – 30 minutes of daylight loss at the end of the month.

Sunrise in Central Texas on Monday [July 6] was at 6:35 a.m. and sunset is at 8:36 p.m. On July 31st, sunrise will be at 6:49 a.m. and sunset will be at 8:31 p.m.

We’ll continue to slowly lose daylight through the summer months, but accelerates in meteorological fall before the winter solstice on December 21st. So the gradual decline in daylight daily won’t do much to combat the extreme heat in the coming weeks.

At the end of August [31st], sunrise in Central Texas will be at 7:06 a.m. and sunset will be at 8:17 p.m. Cooler days are ahead, but not for a while.