Fraction of Leander, Cedar Park residents stay in town to work

By Kara Vaught Friday, 17 October 2008

More than 90 percent of Leander and Cedar Park citizens work in other towns, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Local Employment Dynamics database.

The term “commuter shed” is used to describe the portion of a city’s residents who leave town to work.

In 2006, the most current year for which commuter shed data is available, 6.1 percent of Cedar Park residents were employed full time in the city. That same year, 4.4 percent of Leander residents stayed in town to work. The majority of each city’s residents commuted to Austin.

The numbers are calculated by taking residential data from the census bureau and matching it with information from the Texas Workforce Commission. This method provides a good idea of the number of people who travel to another city for work, said Brian Kelsey, economic development coordinator for the Capital Area Council of Governments, which collects and analyzes the census bureau’s data.

However, part-time employees, contractors and other workers for whom unemployment insurance is not required are not included in these figures.

In order to obtain more accurate data, some cities hire companies to conduct door-to-door surveys, Kelsey said, but neither Leander nor Cedar Park has done so.

What do the numbers mean?

To Kelsey, who consults with Central Texas cities about economic development, this type of data makes the case for regionalism.

“All you have to do is look at this [commuter shed] map and see that Austin companies rely on the surrounding areas,” he said. “You also see the impact highway corridors have.”

Envision Central Texas, a nonprofit organization that collects and distributes data about regional growth, recently released a study showing that transportation has retained its spot as the issue about which Central Texas residents are most concerned. In 2004, the first time ECT contracted a study, transportation also ranked first among topics including land use, cost of living, water availability, air/water quality, open space, public education and jobs.

In Leander

Leander’s economic development director, Kirk Clennan, said the commuter shed report also highlighted the need for regionalism — Leander’s need to be involved in it.

“What we’re trying to do is work with the governor’s office and the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce to position Leander, as well as all of our neighboring cities, as places where you can work,” Clennan said.

This year, for the first time, Leander is a contributing member of Opportunity Austin, a program created by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce to promote Central Texas.

“Leander has the advantage of having a quality school district and affordable real estate. So for someone who is looking for a sizeable tract of land to put a manufacturing warehouse/distribution/office site, Leander would be more conducive than Austin. Thankfully, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce is marketing the region.”

In Cedar Park

To Phil Brewer, economic development director for Cedar Park, a large number of people leaving the city to work is a secret asset.

“I refer to it as our hidden workforce; those folks who commute into Austin every day who, if there was a comparable job opportunity in Cedar Park, would seriously consider doing away with the drive and staying closer to home.”

As the price of energy becomes more and more of a concern, Brewer said companies will begin to study where potential employee pools live and then locate there.

“I use that when I talk to potential clients. We have all these people who commute out of our community every day and are stuck in traffic and drive an hour each way. In some cases, they might even be willing to take a little less pay just to be able to stay in Cedar Park and go have lunch at school with their kids or run errands that you can’t do if you’re driving down to Austin or over to Round Rock or somewhere out of the city every day to go to work.”

Opportunity Austin

This spring, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce announced plans for Opportunity Austin 2.0, the next step in the Central Texas Business Initiative launched in 2004.

From 2001 to 2003, metro Austin, which had grown quickly during the tech boom of the 1990s, experienced massive job losses and record-level unemployment rates. Income in the region dropped for the first time since 1987. In response, the chamber created Opportunity Austin, which focuses on strategies to make the Austin region, which includes Williamson, Travis, Bastrop, Hays, and Caldwell counties, more competitive with its rival regions by retaining its existing companies and attracting new businesses.

The five-year economic development strategy aimed to create 72,000 regional jobs and increase regional payroll by $2.9 billion. With one year left to achieve its goals, Opportunity Austin has shattered expectations with 112,300 new jobs and a regional payroll increase of $4.9 billion.

Opportunity Austin works closely with outlying communities to promote the region as a whole, which was not always the case.

“Prior to Opportunity Austin, there was a lot more talk of regional cooperation than actually occurred,” said Gary Farmer, the chairman of Opportunity Austin.

When a prospective client visits the vicinity, Opportunity Austin contacts its partners in the five-county region and invites them to the presentation. The client is able to hear about each community and the whole area in terms of education, housing and quality of life, instead of merely hearing about resources within the Austin city limits.

Opportunity Austin also gives smaller communities the chance to travel with them on mission trips in order to be recognized by national companies and vie for locations in their towns.

“The opportunity to get our community in front of potential companies is worth the investment,” Brewer said. “We benefit from the new location even if it’s not in our city,” said Brewer. “They live here. They create sales tax revenue. They get involved in our community. There’s an indirect effect for the other communities.”

Opportunity Austin 2.0

The website AustinHumanCapital.com, where companies post jobs free of charge, is one of Opportunity Austin’s new programs. Plans also call for targeting specific industries for growth, such as convergence technologies, creative media, green industries, corporate/professional headquarters, and healthcare and life sciences.

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Envision Central Texas encourages regional growth planning

by Tiffany Young

Made up of 67 board members from business representatives, environmental organizations, neighborhoods and policy makers, Envision Central Texas is a nonprofit organization funded through public and private contributions. The organization was created in 2001 to serve Travis, Williamson, Bastrop, Caldwell and Hays counties.

While ECT is not a governmental body with implementation powers, it gathers and provides regional data to both public and private entities. ECT’s Quality Growth Toolbox, created in partnership with the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, includes more than 100 resources, models, best practices and other tools intended to assist communities in growth planning.

Projects like the transit-oriented development in Leander follow ECT principles of dense, regionally planned growth.

While improved mobility, diverse businesses, affordable housing and environmental preservation are key elements ECT hopes communities will incorporate during planning, it also believes each community is unique and should preserve its character.

“ECT is not pushing a singular answer — ECT’s role is to make sure leaders are engaged deeply so we know something will come of it,” ECT chairman Jim Walker said.

Regional planning

“ECT plays, I think, a very much needed and, frankly, a unique role than any other organization in the region in that we are looking at the long-term planning for the region and are convening both public and private leaders to talk about the conversations around those issues,” ECT’s executive director, Sally Campbell, said.

Of the nearly 700 local residents who participated in ECT’s study to determine the issues most important to area residents, 92 percent felt that communities could do a better job of coordinating their planning efforts, with three-quarters of respondents in agreement that “ensuring collaboration among jurisdictions” is the best way to implement the vision.

Campbell said most of the people in the study generally support ECT’s vision of concentrated growth.

“People still believe that regional vision is pretty much on track,” said Travis Froehlich, ECT vice chair and vice president of strategic planning for Seton Family of Hospitals.

“But, in addition to working on transportation and land use — it really has added water, climate and regional coordination to the list of topics that people think are important.”

Transportation

The opening of Toll 183A in spring 2007 and Toll 1 in fall 2006 brought more transportation options to north Austin, as will the scheduled March 30 debut of the urban commuter rail, Capital Metro’s Red Line.

However, according to the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s Take on Traffic campaign, 70 cars are added to Central Texas roadways every day, adding about 25,000 cars annually.

Many in the survey expressed concerns over traffic congestion influencing the region’s economic growth.

“We’ve had, in the last five years, some fairly significant improvements in roadway infrastructure, although it continues to be a lingering problem.” said Gary Farmer, GACC’s vice chair for economic development.

“Companies want to ensure that they can move their employees and their products safely and efficiently.”

Economic development

ECT’s study found employers believe Central Texas is doing better regarding economic development than five years ago, and the competitive position and relative affordability of Central Texas compared to other technology centers was a theme in the interviews.

ECT pointed to the GACC’s Opportunity Austin for its regional economic development plan, but said there is still a perception that GACC’s effect is felt mostly in Travis County.

GACC said it wants to attract companies to any of its five-county area. It recently launched www.AustinHumanCapital.com to attract new mid-management employees to Central Texas for existing technology and life science companies.

“Retention and expansion are perhaps more important than recruitment attraction,” Farmer said, “because it doesn’t matter what economy you’re talking about — Austin or Denver or San Francisco or Detroit — approximately 80 percent of all new jobs in any one of those cities will come from existing companies.”