City appears poised to continue steady growth, Wade says

By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

Although attendance was sparse, information was copious during City Manager Brandon Wade’s Nov. 14 State of the City address at the Pflugerville Justice Center, hosted by the Pflugerville Council of Neighborhood Associations.

Wade said Pflugerville is in position to continue its steady growth, which puts the task of managing that growth at the top of city officials’ priorities.

“If we all wrote down on a piece of paper what we though was good and not-so-good growth, I don’t know that any of us would have the same thing on the list,” Wade said. “It’s one of those things where as a community we all have to come together.”

With growth management established as the key to his address, Wade found it an appropriate setting to identify former Round Rock municipal veteran Tom Word as his choice to fill the newly created third assistant city manager position, joining Trey Fletcher and Lauri Gillam on the staff.

Word will be charged with managing the city’s public works, and comes with plenty of experience after working 14 years for Pflugerville’s neighbor to the north, eventually becoming Round Rock’s chief of public works.

“[Tom] was at one time the district engineer for the Corpus Christi district of TxDOT and knows everybody at the Texas Department of Transportation, which is an incredibly important thing for a city,” Wade said.

As the city staff is filling new vacancies, Wade said residential growth in neighborhoods such as Highland Park North and Falcon Pointe is putting Pflugerville neighborhoods close to full occupancy. Wade said residential expansion into the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (territory outside the city limits that the city could legally annex), however, is continuing at a significant rate.

“Last year we had over 460 housing starts, which is pretty significant considering the economic climate we’re in,” Wade said.

Wade said 200 of the new residences were within the city limits and 260 were in the ETJ. He said construction has also begun on a new high-end apartment complex with close to 400 units in the Stone Hill Town Center behind 24 Hour Fitness. Stone Hill developer NewQuest Properties has also taken steps toward establishing a “restaurant row” in the center of Stone Hill by removing a traffic circle to be replaced by curbside diagonal parking in front of the restaurants.

The city’s growth is not contained to residential growth, however, as Pflugerville Community Develop-ment Corporation has begun, as Wade said, “aggressively” recruiting businesses to the area. PCDC has recently approved incentive agreements for a wind-energy powered data storage center that will bring $210 million in capital construction to the city within 10 years, as well as with the Texas Department of Public Safety to build one of the state’s six driver’s license “megacenters” that will bring 600 people to the city each day. Wade said the new projects are good examples of good growth.

“To put that into perspective, $210 million is just under 10 percent of our current existing tax base,” Wade said. “That’s serious.”

PCDC has also entered into an agreement with the city’s Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. The TIRZ is a public-private partnership between the city and Falcon Pointe developer Newland Communities. The TIRZ is a designated area within which development costs can be rebated to developers through property tax as an incentive to get new projects on the ground.

“This zone is going to be kind of off the books for a while as it pays for the infrastructure to get in place that necessitates that development,” Wade said.

One of the projects the city hopes is spurred by the TIRZ is the construction of Colorado Sands Boulevard, which will ultimately connect Kelly Lane with East Pflugerville Parkway and create a new entrance to Hendrickson High School from FM 685. Wade said the arterial will provide much needed relief to Kelly Lane travelers who want to avoid the traffic signal at the SH 130 intersection.

Keeping on the topic of road renovation, Wade said City Council recently awarded a contract to reconstruct the low water crossing on East Pflugerville Parkway by state Highway 130.

Not all of the city’s construction is happening on the east side of town, as the city awarded Lee Lewis Construction a $4.04 million contract to build the much anticipated addition to the Pflugerville Community Library. Residents approved funding for the renovations in a 2008 bond election. Wade said construction should take approximately 16 months.

“We’re very pleased with the direction the library is going. We have a new library director [Lisa Charbonnet], and I think she is also going to be an incredible asset for the community,” Wade said.

The cost of the library expansion was significantly less than previously anticipated, Wade said, and City Council will hold future discussions concerning how, and if to spend the additional funds bonded out for the project.

Looking ahead, Wade said the city will have to carefully watch how Travis County plans to structure its emergency service districts, as ESD No. 2 currently resides almost entirely within the Pflugerville city limits and therefore allows the city a level of permanent attention that is rare in other parts of the county.

“While we can nearly completely protect ESD No. 2, the other ESDs are completely at Austin’s mercy. I want to recognize how unique and how great the Pflugerville Fire Department is because I want to make sure we continue with that great service,” Wade said. “What I want to leave you with is that my wife and I absolutely love Pflugerville. We think it is a great place. We fell absolutely blessed to be here in this community, and I and my staff also feel very blessed to have the opportunity to serve the citizens of Pflugerville.”