Snailbrook: Inside Musk’s emerging company town

Musk is expanding Snailbrook, his 1O-square-mile company town in Bastrop County, Texas

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The world’s richest person is testing the limits of just how amenable the area will be to his ambitions.

(AP)

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, has already shown that when a city’s rules won't bend to his will, he'll create a new city and new rules. That's how Starbase, the self-governing town built around SpaceX’s southern Texas launch site, came to be.

He's had a relatively easier time building his other company town about 350 miles north in Bastrop County, where the local government has (mostly) gone along with the billionaire’s vision so far. The more than 10-square-mile Musk compound known as Snailbrook is home to his tunnel-drilling venture the Boring Company, X and a manufacturing facility for SpaceX, amidst a handful of amenities for employees.

Snailbrook is now set to get even more of the trappings of a full-fledged company town: a development of eventually more than 20 homes for staff onsite, science centre, gym and other facilities are in the works, according to correspondence between Musk’s executives and city and state officials that Bloomberg obtained through a public records request.

As Musk tasks Boring with building out the town, he’s also testing the limits of just how amenable the area will be to his ambitions. To date, Bastrop has had relatively little red tape to deal with and has tolerated infractions.

But Starbase proves he has plan B, should he need one.

Boring and the city of Bastrop did not return requests for comment on the new construction plans.