Malik said the city is accustomed to rapid residential growth, but moving forward, it expects to focus largely on commercial growth, as bringing in large employers is a major goal for Leander.
Malik sat down with Community Impact to discuss the development aims of the city. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How is development changing in Leander, and where do you expect it to go?
Historically, Leander’s had a ton of residential development. ... Now, it’s shifted to where we’re seeing those commercial businesses come in and really take advantage of all the residential development that’s occurred.
I think Leander is now also primed to see major employers move to the area. Right now, from a development standpoint, most of the companies that are in the market are looking for existing space to lease out, and we’re seeing a good amount of speculative flex industrial developments underway, and that’s going to really be home to some of our larger employers in the future.
Are there any specific major employers Leander is trying to bring to town?
In this area, and this isn’t unique to Leander, we still have a good amount of Samsung-related support companies looking around to service that big facility that’s going up in the eastern part of Williamson County. Anytime a project of that magnitude comes into an area, you have suppliers follow suit, so those suppliers are in the market and looking for space. Tesla being here also brings suppliers.
How do you convince developers to come to the city and build these flex developments?
There’s really not a one-size-fits-all. On the Titan project, there were some unique infrastructure challenges with that site, especially when you look at potentially getting larger vehicles into the site. CR 270 isn’t equipped right now to handle that sort of traffic, so we went in and said we’ll jointly cost share that CR 270 road, so in our 380 agreement, we’re splitting the costs down the middle [for] that portion of the road.
Does Leander have any major issues it will need to overcome?
I think the real focus here in the next few years is going to be on streets and roads—making sure we can handle all of the new [development], not only residential, but businesses as well, so that’s a big priority for us.
What work needs to be done on streets and roads?
It’s a mixture [of] new roads to help relieve existing roads. ... We’re expanding San Gabriel. ... It will eventually now expand out to Ronald Reagan to make another east-west connection.
When people think of Leander, what do you want to come to mind?
Full-service community where they can get everything they need from restaurants that they enjoy and those services that they can utilize but that also has employment opportunities here.
It’s a work in progress, working toward getting to that point.
