Austin, TX
Austin City Council members ask to begin process of renaming Cesar Chavez Street
AUSTIN, Texas — Some members of the Austin City Council are calling on the city manager to develop a plan for renaming Cesar Chavez Street after allegations of sexual abuse came out against the late labor leader earlier this year.
According to a memo on Friday to City Manager T.C. Broadnax, José Velásquez, Vanessa Fuentes, José “Chito” Vela and Zohaib “Zo” Qadri requested Broadnax develop a community outreach plan to gather input and assess the cost to the city, residents and businesses on renaming the street.
“The City of Austin is committed to upholding the dignity and safety of all people and affirms its unwavering support to survivors of sexual violence,” the memo said.
The council members outlined how the outreach plan should be developed and what should be included.
For the development of the plan, council members asked Broadnax to do the following steps:
- Work with the Equity Office, Transportation and Public Works Department, and other appropriate departments as needed.
- Engage Latino Community Leaders, labor unions, City Commissions and residents, businesses, neighborhood associations located on East and West Cesar Chavez Street.
- Assess estimated renaming costs to the city.
- Assess estimated renaming costs to residents and businesses on East and West Cesar Chavez Street.
- Follow additional guidelines provided by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO).
And the council members said the outreach plan should include:
- A series of hybrid listening sessions with at least two in-person sessions and one virtual session.
- An online survey for the public.
- A stakeholder survey for residents and businesses on East and West Cesar Chavez Street to understand the impacts of renaming the street.
The council members requested that Broadnax come up with a report by May 26 that included a plan, cost estimates and a proposed timeline for the renaming, according to the memo.
César Chávez was known for his work with the farmworker movement and co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America, with Dolores Huerta. Huerta said she was one of the young women and girls who were groomed and sexually abused by Chávez, which resulted in two pregnancies. She gave birth to the two children and sent them to live with other families.
In her statement, Huerta said she did not know about the other women and girls and that she stayed silent for 60 years because she worried that her coming forward would hurt the farmworker movement.
Other Texas cities have already distanced themselves from Chávez. In Fort Worth, the city removed the street toppers that honored Chávez.
The Cesar E. Chavez Legacy & Educational Foundation — the foundation that hosted the nation’s largest César Chávez march in San Antonio for 29 years — announced it will soon dissolve. The City of San Antonio moved the Cesar Chavez city holiday to Good Friday, and it is requesting the public’s feedback on renaming César E. Chávez Boulevard.
Also, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has directed all public schools to suspend any instruction or activities related to Chávez.
Chávez died on April 23, 1993, at the age of 66.
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas is getting its first major new national stock exchange in decades, and finance experts say it could create new opportunities for Austin’s tech companies and startups looking to grow.
The Texas Stock Exchange is launching this week in Dallas, with live trading expected to begin as early as Friday. The exchange began operations Monday, and it says all publicly traded stocks should be available on the platform by the end of the month. Thousands of publicly traded stocks are expected to be available by then.
Ray Perryman, President and CEO of the Perryman Group, said the launch signals Texas’ growing influence in the financial sector.
“It really lets the world know that Texas is indeed a major player in this industry,” Perryman said.
Gov. Greg Abbott called the exchange another sign of Texas’ expanding economic reach, saying, “This is another step that expands the financial might of Texas in the United States, and cements our economic power on the global stage.”
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Perryman said the exchange could provide another path for companies to go public and could help attract more growing companies to Austin and the rest of the state. He said the added access to capital could have ripple effects across the economy.
“It increases opportunities for firms in the area to expand, have access to capital, to be more profitable. That means they hire more people. That means they pay more taxes. That means they buy more things in their supply chains,” Perryman said.
Texas ranks second in the U.S. for Fortune 500 headquarters, behind California and ahead of New York. With the Texas Stock Exchange set to launch, experts say Austin’s startup community could see even more growth.
Perryman said Austin-area tech firms could benefit from having an in-state exchange option.
“They’ll now have a vehicle here in Texas that will be more efficient and less expensive to register on than the traditional exchanges,” Perryman said.
Perryman said the exchange’s success will depend on how many companies choose to list on it, how much investment it attracts, and how many additional companies decide to move to Texas.
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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