Hello and welcome to the San Antonio Files.

I'm your host, Ed Arnold, editor in chief of the San Antonio Business Journal.

You'd be hard pressed to find anyone whose name is more synonymous with San Antonio than Henry Cisneros, a respected community leader whose decades long career has spanned for mayor of San Antonio, actually the first Hispanic mayor of a major U.S.

city to Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under president Bill Clinton.

He now runs a successful capital investment company, and he and his wife, MaryAlice, work mentoring youth on the city's west side, creating leaders for tomorrow.

Henry continues to be a driving force in the region, with his focus now on helping to shape the incredible growth between San Antonio and Austin.

The Mega metro.

The topic was the focus of a documentary on KLRN in in 2023, and is now updated in his new book, The Austin San Antonio Mega Region Opportunity and Challenge.

In the lone Star State.

Henry, welcome to SA Files.

Ed, thank you for your very kind introduction.

Not at all.

Happy to have you.

So let's set the scene a little bit with the book.

Right.

We we kick off your book talking about the intense growth that both San Antonio and Austin have seen over the last maybe 20 years at this point.

For those that have not watched it on a numbers way, help us illustrate how big that growth has been, how intense it is, and how far we've come in that period.

Well, first of all, let me say this book is the flip of the ordinary, a process where a book is written and then a documentary is done.

Like this but KLRN did a documentary on the Austin San Antonio region, which I had the privilege to host, and we learned so much from it that we thought we needed to document it and take it a step further.

So that's what this book does.

It's published by the A&M press.

Let me say about the numbers.

Most San Antonians and people in Austin don't know that this region together, from what I like to say, Pflugerville in the north, to Floresville in the south is 5.3 million people.

5.3 million people would make it the 10th largest metro in the country.

5.3 million people is a population larger than the state of Louisiana.

Larger than 25 different states.

So it's a very significant population.

Now here's the most important thing.

The census tells us that present trends continued.

That 5.3 million in 2050 will be 8.3 million, as 3 million people from 5.3 to 8.3 coming every day.

Right?

3 million is the size of a city of Chicago.

Put right in this geography between the northern cities of Williamson County, north of Boston and San Antonio.

So it's a phenomenon, probably the fastest growing region in the country and and likely to continue to be because there's no natural barriers.

It's not like there's an ocean on one side and a mountain range on the other.

It's going to continue to grow.

Assuming that we address some of the critical issues, that could possibly be limiting factors going forward.

But this is, a region we like to talk about San Antonio's growth.

It's very fast.

Austin's now the 10th largest city in the country, essentially where 1.5 million.

Austin is right at 1,990,000.

So within 10,000, they'll they'll do that in a couple of months, right.

And become the, 10th largest city in the country, which is a phenomenon in and of itself.

Never in the history of the United States has one state had four cities in the top ten, most populous in the country.

We've got Houston at number four, San Antonio at number seven, Dallas at number eight, and now Austin at number ten.

And oh, by the way, Fort Worth at number 12.

So Texas is clearly an urban state addressing urban problems.

And we're fortunate to live in an important corner of that Texas triangle, the Austin San Antonio mega region.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, it's it's also fascinating.

In your book, you talk about the different types of growth that have happened in Austin and in San Antonio.

We think of Austin as a high flying tech city.

It's a little younger, it's a little more educated, obviously, with you out there.

On the other hand, San Antonio has been growing at nearly an equal rate, but without a specific industry that's pushed it.

I think the story of Austin in the last several decades has been the tech activity.

You can pinpoint the date to when entities like eMMC made the decision to come and base a research consortium in Austin.

Of course, they had Dell and others that came up naturally.

But now you've got headquarters of Tesla headquarters of Oracle, and many, many others added to the state government, added to a great university with great research capabilities, added to the growth of the biosciences, which is starting up because of the Dell contribution to build a medical school and hospital now in San Antonio.

Our story, I think, has been a story of diversification, because this was a city that relied on tourism and the military, and while they're still important in the meantime, we've grown the bioscience sector to 160,000 people.

Our number one employer in town revolves around our clinical capabilities, our medical school, our research capabilities, our startup businesses in the bio sciences.

Add to that the same phenomenon happening in cybersecurity, where we have about 20,000 people working in cybersecurity but growing fast.

Advanced manufacturing.

Who would have ever thought that San Antonio would be an advanced manufacturing center?

But now we have Toyota, that produces 240,000 tundras and sequoias every year.

Navistar, the old International Harvester building trucks, JCB, an English firm, a building tractors for internal to plants.

All of us.

And Port San Antonio, where Jim Pearse has done a phenomenal job of envisioning a replacement for the old Kelley Air Force Base.

This is a story of diversification, and it's all positive.

And the other thing that people don't fully appreciate is the growth in the other cities besides Austin and San Antonio, like New Braunfels, which is over 100,000 people.

When I was mayor, New Braunfels had 30,000 people.

It's 110,000 San Marcos host to a university that has 41,000 students alone.

And then there's Kyle and Buda around there in Hays County, which are two of the fastest growing counties in the country.

North of Austin is almost the biggest story because you've got places like Georgetown and Pflugerville and Leander and Round Rock.

Some of those are already 100,000 each.

So and then to the east, you have places like Taylor where Samsung is putting a $45 billion plant.

You've got the Tesla facility, adjacent there to Lockhart and Bastrop.

Seguin, where the Japanese have put a plant, the Ason plant and others are.

Seguin is becoming a manufacturing center itself.

Burnie to our west, Dripping Springs to the west of Austin.

It's a region.

Absolutely.

It's a region.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we we've got some serious thinking to do about how we prepare, because the question no longer is, will we grow or are there things we need to do to grow?

That's not the question.

We're gonna grow, right?

Question is, are we going to be ready to make possible a reasonably good quality of life?

Yes.

We know that this kind of growth means good things.

It means better jobs, higher paying jobs, more wealth circulating through the area, an emphasis on excellence in our great institutions like our universities, like Texas BioMed, etc.. All of that is good and good for our people.

But it also, if we don't address it thoughtfully, can have downsides that are the you kill the goose that's laying the golden egg.

Absolutely.

I'm thinking about those communities between here and Austin, particularly on the south and side, the north side along the 35 corridor.

Yeah, the pressure that must be for those communities to go from 30,000 to 100,000, from 10,000 to 50,000.

You're talking about.

Right.

And, you know, many of them don't have the same kind of tools that obviously Austin and San Antonio do with managing that kind of growth.

This collaboration is going to be required among those communities.

Absolutely.

And I think Campbell County is the ninth fastest growing county in America.

And Hays, which is San Marcos, Buda, Kyle, etc., is the fifth fastest growing county in America.

And their growth is dwarfed by Williamson, which isn't growing so fast as a percentage because they're already big, but in sheer numbers is bigger than the other two.

So yeah, this this whole it's a regional phenomena.

And that's why we we name the book Mega Region.

Right.

To describe what is the real phenomenon here.

No, the to me, to your point about pressure, you know, you have to seriously question can it be a region, right?

If it has only one spine to carry all the traffic into the entire region?

It's 35, right?

Where people take their life in their own hands amidst the 18 wheelers, carrying all the NAFTA traffic.

So we have to think not only of more roadway.

Thankfully, Tex Dot is building a second level on a lot of 35, but S-H 130.

For those who haven't discovered it, it's a miracle.

Yes.

It is.

It is to be able to drive at 80 miles an hour, which is the speed limit over there.

That's right.

Around some of the 35 congestion to get into Austin, like Bergstrom or beyond Austin to the northern counties or back on to 35 and hit on to Dallas.

That's a wonder.

I expect that because of these two roadways, a lot of the growth that we're going to be seeing is actually going to be between the roadways, because to the west of 35 is the more sensitive water features, right?

The aquifer, the limestone caverns, etc.. So 281 is a good roadway, but it's not going to see the same growth that I think we're going to see between 35 and the black land dirt flatland develop over the land to the east where Tesla is locating, where we're seeing other developments along, 130 already.

So thank thank goodness for the leadership that managed to see that and build it in advance.

But the next step is to make some connections between 35 and 130.

And every legislature for the last 2 or 3 has been edging up to it, but not quite appropriated.

The money for that.

I think, some of our local senators and, and congresspersons are working on that.

And then eventually, sooner than later, we will need to have some public transit, light rail that connects Austin and San Antonio.

Even if we can't achieve the dream of high speed rail on all the pieces of the Texas Triangle, we can worry about Austin, San Antonio and put in some connections.

Can you imagine students taking courses at UTSA but finishing off an alternate set of courses that match their mass, their degree at the University of Texas or at Texas State, for example?

That's just in the educational realm.

So many other areas of collaboration, people who literally work along the corridor and being able to go to their workplaces in either San Antonio or Orange or not, absolutely.

You go into the discussion about rail in the book.

And I was happy to see it because I have constantly thought it almost makes too much sense for us to have a rail connection.

What's preventing that?

What is it?

Is it political will?

What do you think is in the way of this being done?

Well, there have been there have been issues over the years.

One of them was there's a rail in place, but the railroads that carry cargo don't want to mix cargo and passenger.

So we're not allowed to use that established rail.

To this point, over the years, other people have opposed it.

For, for once upon a time, Southwest Airlines was not happy to have an altered connection to the Texas Triangle.

I think southwest is is now understands what is happening here, and it's bigger than they can ever carry just on southwest flights.

And then just the, the, the inertia that comes from not having anybody in charge.

These are different governments in different counties, in different cities, and nobody has taken control of the process.

I think we need to set up some governance, not only in that area but in others.

Yeah, like collaboration between our airports, for example, or like the quest for additional water for the region.

Yes, we did our piece for San Antonio, which is the Vista Ridge project, and went out and got 25% more more water for San Antonio.

That'll see us through for a number of years.

It's a phenomenon.

I can't tell the people of San Antonio what how grateful they should be to the water leaders who saw Vista Ridge and put it in place.

Austin wishes they had done the same because they rely for their water on the Highland Lakes up to like LBJ and and Lake Travis, etc.

but if we were to have a drought like the drought of record in 1955, we went multiple years and the lakes dropped.

The growth of Austin would be threatened.

So they're they're they're looking for water, right.

You know, we need to be collaborating on adequate power, right.

Because now we have this tech reality.

Once upon a time, we would have begged for data centers, and now we have data centers coming at us from all sides because of the technology base.

And they demand their insatiable power.

The Microsoft Data Center in West San Antonio uses more power than the Toyota plant that produces 240,000 trucks.

They just got some more land.

And they just got more than they.

Just bought some more land.

For an additional.

Yeah, a data set.

Yeah, exactly.

It's great that you bring up Vista Ridge because it was, as you say, great forethought for the city.

There's concern for the communities outside the city that they don't have the same protection.

Again, we're talking about collaboration among those communities.

Correct.

How do we assure folks obviously, people have been worried about San Antonio's water and the region's water for since before this population situation.

Right.

Exploded.

You know, how do we assure folks that there will be enough or are we racing with the technology at this point?

Well, I think there's two things.

One, we do need some governance structures where people are talking to each other across the region.

Judge Takai has made an effort to team up with Judge Andy Brown and Travis County.

They're in serious discussions about the rail connection and Andy Brown is an impressive person, highly respected in Austin and in Travis County.

So the governance piece is real.

We created something years ago called the Austin San Antonio Quarter Council.

Austin has something called they called Ero.

The Austin area research organization.

Those are examples of people thinking and working.

But we really need to engage the broader leadership of both places.

So that's one thing.

The other is we need to really be thinking through technological solutions.

For example, the Corpus Christi area is seriously working on desalination, and here we are in the Gulf.

Too expensive just a handful of years ago.

Well, it is expensive.

And and corpus just went through a political.

Yes death fight.

Between the corporations that want the water for refineries and such and the citizens.

And who's going to pay for the increased cost of desalination?

So right now it's a dead letter.

They killed it temporarily.

I just saw a message yesterday that Portland down there is talking about putting a desalinization plant themselves.

Since Corpus Christi isn't so.

But you stop and think about that.

We're adjacent to the Gulf and we solve their problems.

Then we can take more water from the rivers.

It's a I mean, there's all kinds of ways and interconnections here, but we do need to think about water supply.

There's other aquifers.

The vista ridge project connected us to the aquifer in Burlington County.

And there's, other outreach to distant lakes and so forth.

But we've got to have our eye on the ball.

Yeah.

I can't can't lose the attention for that issue at all.

Similarly, the electrical grid, obviously, anyone who went through, you know, the difficulties that Texas had with the grid a few years ago, you know, has it in the back of their mind every time the heat spikes or the arrogance took hold up?

Who would.

Have imagined that it would be a cold.

Spell that.

Brought this to our attention?

But we're members of Ercot and Ercot shares power.

And even though for years we thought San Antonio had adequate spinning power reserve, because we have, coal, because we have nuclear, because we have, wind and because we have solar and even access to gas if we needed it.

Right.

But in that cold snap, it wasn't enough, right?

When, when we have to share power with the rest of the state.

Right.

So these are big questions.

And, you know, when I was mayor, nuclear power was a major fight.

We had to really, really fight to, to get the nuclear power plant built.

It turns out it's one of the best things that we could have possibly done, because the cost of energy per kilowatt hour is so low compared to, say, coal.

So nuclear power maybe needs to be back on the table.

It is in other parts of the country.

The country needs to face up to this, not just our region.

It's true, it's true.

You know, CPS energy has done a wonderful job of diversifying.

They have a very aggressive goal for renewable energy and have done a great job hitting their benchmarks.

But you do as a customer, you do worry about the affordability, right?

Yeah.

Eventually there's going to rubber.

We'll hit the road with affordability.

Yeah.

Not just in and in power, but of course the inequality that we see in housing.

And it's an area of expertise for you obviously.

Well housing is another area that's is a critical issue.

I spoke a few years ago at something called the Silicon Valley Manufacturers Association, which, is a group that was working on trying to make sure that the capacity of Silicon Valley to continue to build Google and, and the rest of the enterprises out there remain strong.

The critical problem they confronted, they didn't have an adequate supply of housing.

So housing prices went up so workers couldn't afford the housing.

So people commute.

No exaggeration, 5070 miles to get to work in Silicon Valley, in the San Francisco area.

That became a major inhibitor to their economic growth was they didn't address the adequacy of housing.

We need to build more housing.

But these things are all interrelated.

Exactly.

Phoenix has limited housing permits in the last few years periodically because they don't have adequate water.

So you can't issue permits if you can't extend water.

Right.

So those are all these things getting getting conjoined.

Right.

There really should be no limits on housing that we can build affordably in our region.

And we really need to work for that.

And I'm proud to say that San Antonio, under Mayor Nuremburg leadership, passed a bond issue for housing, more housing changed our charter so the city could be more involved in building housing.

Austin doing a great job of developing more affordable housing, including for homeless people.

They have these this the strategy of tiny houses, which is catching attention nationally.

So people are working on this in bits and pieces.

We just need to be more coordinated about the region.

And I think part of the, the, the message of the book is we are a region, right?

And we live or die as a region, and we need to be thinking in larger terms, including in things that are more in the fun category, like professional sports.

Yes, we have a professional team, the San Antonio Spurs.

They have a professional team, the MLS soccer team.

But the day will come when Major League Baseball will say, wait a minute, we're not in a region that's got 7 million people going to 8 million people.

We need to be there.

So collaboration on how do we do that together, where do we put it so the whole region can enjoy it and not compete against each other?

Similarly, NFL in due course, wh in.

No, that's absolutely right.

I mean, as as we've seen in the book multiple times, it's almost, crazy that a region that is as football hungry as this one is, doesn't have an NFL team.

But we've come close a number of times in San Antonio, and I think Austin is salivating as well.

But it makes sense right.

And there are regions in America that have defined their teams as regional.

The Minnesota Vikings, the New England Patriots, the San Francisco 40 Niners now play in play in Santa Clara, which is down in the Peninsula.

But but they're still the San Francisco 40 niners.

So a Central Texas team Austin and San Antonio together makes a lot of sense.

Yeah yeah.

And it certainly would get Austin and San Antonio rooting for the same thing at the same time, which is always positive.

Well I think we're heading in that direction.

Yeah.

You know the Spurs are now playing a few games every season and they sell out in Austin.

So yeah I think we're we're in a good.

We're getting close.

Getting closer to understanding each other.

Well we know we talked a few things about what could derail all this growth.

We're talking about you know, power, water, etc.

but some of the other things that I think are worth addressing that you talked about in the book is there have been other regions in America where the growth seemed inevitable.

Yeah.

You mentioned Detroit.

You mentioned Pittsburgh, New England, for example.

Yeah.

How how is it that some regions lose track of that?

And what can we do to be sure that we don't?

Detroit was in its prime.

And then as we know, the industry got away from them because Japanese imports were more sensitive to gas consumption and, and such and such.

And then they had labor issues as well.

Right.

Silicon Valley in its prime in the last number of years because of Stanford and the research base, the great companies that started with places like Intel.

But they're they're not addressing issues like housing and they that and now people who want to work in technology just as soon go to Austin or go to, Research Triangle, North Carolina or other places.

So you have that moment when all the industrial areas point in the right direction and then you blow it.

Yeah, yeah.

And we pray that, you know, our moment can be made to sustain over a long period of time.

I think it can.

And I actually think we can do something unique in among American cities.

And that is use the coming growth to build a better quality of life for for more and more people.

And we'll do that by our, our education, our training programs, for example, our Alamo colleges, which are now arguably the best community college system in the country, they win the awards that say that, they have 86,000 students this year.

Incredible.

Incredible, immense.

And they're being very, innovative about adding advanced manufacturing training and and other things like that.

As well as just being attentive to creating opportunity that allows people who have been in cities like ours that has too large a poverty population and create the doors, create the the ladders to allow people to to then we we're really doing something unique at that point.

I agree.

Right.

Well I can't recommend the book enough, Henry.

I enjoyed it very, very much.

And if anyone needs a little extra insight into what's coming in the future, I can't recommend that.

Picking it up.

So thank you so much for chatting with me today, I appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us today on The SA Files.

I'm Ed Arnold, the editor in chief of the San Antonio Business Journal.

We appreciate you watching us today on KLRN.