Cedar Park, a small city in Texas, has a stunning new library. The $31 million edifice includes rentable community rooms, a maker’s space with machines to handle digital fabrication, an indoor play space for kids and two screened reading porches on the second floor. Plus, not to be overlooked, thousands of books. Since it opened last November, the library has welcomed more than 330,000 visitors. That’s like every single resident of the city coming through its doors, four times each.

As successful as the new library has been, it’s only the start of something much grander. It’s built among a group of towering pecan trees and surrounded by walking trails and a new playground — a public stake in the ground for the new Bell District, a 54-acre master-planned complex with restaurants, shops, office space and hundreds of housing units. The project responds to a community demand that came up again and again during a recent comprehensive planning process, says Brenda Eivens, Cedar Park’s city manager: “This desire to have a place to go, an identity, something that feels like the heart of your city.”

It’s not every city that gets a chance to build a downtown half a century after its incorporation and 140 years after its founding. But so explosive is the growth of Central Texas that cities of all sizes from Austin to San Antonio are getting a chance to recast their identities and remake their infrastructure.

Cedar Park grew from around 5,000 people in 1990 to 48,000 in 2010 and more than 77,000 today, a multiplication of the tax base that’s made it possible to bond for state-of-the-art amenities like the new library. Other small cities within the two metro areas, including Georgetown, Kyle, San Marcos and New Braunfels, have at various times topped the lists of fastest-growing American communities in the last decade. Austin, which has grown faster than most other big U.S. cities in recent years, is transforming from a “keep it weird” college town and cultural capital into a tech hub to rival Silicon Valley. San Antonio, the 7th-biggest city in the country, managed to gain more residents than any other American city in 2023.

In Cedar Park, Eivens drove from the library across town to the site of a new Nebraska Furniture Mart, a massive furniture retailer that started in Omaha in the 1930s. The store, which has only four other locations in the U.S., has such a massive draw that it’s expected to generate tourism from around the state. Still under development this spring, dozens of pickup trucks were lined up in the dirt lot and cranes stretched into the sky. The site seemed big enough to hold an airport.

Cities compete for economic development projects like those. But the growth of the region has surprisingly generated a new collegiality between officials in different communities, who trade tips and lobby for their shared interests.

The region may not be a single entity, but it’s beginning to act a bit more like one. “You always want what’s best for your city,” Eivens says. But, she adds, “you’re not going to get an economy of scale if you don’t figure out how to work together.”

View full article here: Texas Cities Encourage and Cope With Massive Growth