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Here it comes: Elon Musk says 'stunning' $1.1 billion Tesla Gigafactory will be built in Austin area

The Cybertruck pickup and the Model Y will be produced at the Austin Tesla factory.
The Austin metro will soon be home to a $1.1 billion Gigafactory, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk announced during the company's quarterly earnings update on Wednesday.
"We're going to make it a factory that's going to be stunning," he told investors, adding that construction is "already underway."
As proposed, the factory will be located on a 2,000-acre site in Southeast Travis County. It will provide at least 5,000 jobs and produce the Cybertruck pickup and the Model Y, a midsize SUV.
Both Del Valle ISD and Travis County offered Tesla tax rebates to build the factory in their jurisdictions. In exchange for significant long-term incentives, Tesla agreed to a minimum wage of $15 an hour for all factory employees, including construction workers.
The proposed factory site has been owned for years by the construction supplier Martin Marietta and used for a sand and gravel mining operation.
The finished factory will include a public-access boardwalk along the Colorado River, Musk said. "It's going to basically be an ecological paradise."
On Twitter, Mayor Steve Adler said that the factory will bring an "economic boost" to East Austin, while Gov. Greg Abbott welcomed the company.
Tesla picks Texas for its Cybertruck factory. Thanks to .@elonmusk & .@Tesla for embracing our great state. Th… https://t.co/tKr7tU2piK— Greg Abbott (@Greg Abbott) 1595455819.0
Tesla had support for the factory during the months of negotiation that preceded the announcement, but not from everyone.
Residents and union members raised concerns during public hearings about Tesla's track record of worker safety and adherence to incentive agreements.
This story is developing and will be updated.
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Stephanie Ashworth lived in a neighborhood north of Tarrytown, near W. 35th St. and Balcones Drive the summer of 2013. One of her neighbors wanted to move to a different school district and decided to rent out their home on Airbnb upon leaving.
“We’re like—’ok’—we didn’t know any better,” Ashworth said. “And it was awful.”
Ashworth said guests played loud music, used the pool naked and would return from trips at the lake stumbling drunk out of party buses.
“It ruins your peace of mind where you should be able to have it. Where you should be able to feel safe, where the kids should be able to go out front,” Ashworth said. “And we shouldn't find used condoms, empty beer bottles, the trash, the parking, it's so disturbing.”
Ashworth is now head of the Austin chapter of the Texas Neighborhood Coalition, a statewide group that assists people looking to restrict and regulate short-term rentals in their residential neighborhoods. She talked to Austonia following Airbnb’s announcement this week that it will deploy new anti-party technology in the US and Canada.
The initiative aims to prevent potentially high-risk reservations by being a more robust version of the “under 25” system, which reviews guests under the age of 25 without positive reviews who are booking locally. A similar variation of this system has been piloted in Australia since October 2021 and has resulted in a 35% drop in incidents of unauthorized parties in pilot areas.
Airbnb is hoping for similar success in other regions but noted that there could still be some hiccups once the system is in effect.
“While we are optimistic that this technology will have a positive impact for the safety of our community and our goal to reduce unauthorized parties—we want to be clear that no system is perfect,” Airbnb wrote in a statement announcing the new tech. “We work hard to deter bad actors from using our platform, but ultimately Airbnb is an online platform that facilitates real world connections.”
For Ashworth, this system falls short of what she’d like to see from the company and she’d like for them to be clearer about what constitutes a party in the company’s eyes.
“So I have no doubt that this technology they're touting for the party houses is nonsense,” Ashworth said. “They are not a company that's run with integrity, they're not a good corporate citizen.”
But people will continue to flock to Airbnb as Austin continues to be a major tourist destination with festivals like Austin City Limits and South by Southwest drawing in thousands. Even on a regular weekend pandemic recovery has been in full swing with downtown entertainment districts seeing visits close to 2019 levels.
Ultimately, Ashworth sees room to accommodate tourists while ensuring neighborhoods remain homey for Austinites.
“My personal opinion is the home team comes first,” Ashworth said. “The whole city doesn't need to be turned over to the tourist industry and areas that are zoned residentially should remain for residents. I do understand that we are a tourist destination. But you can have a short-term rental pretty much anywhere in the city except in residential zones.”
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