10 Things You Didn’t Know About Leander

So, you are doing your research on Austin. You may live here, or you’re thinking about moving here, and Leander keeps coming up on your search, and there’s a lot of stuff going on, and it’s just a lot.

So today, I’m going to tell you ten things that you didn’t know about Leander and make sure you stick around to the end if you’re a beer nerd because there’s going to be something that I think is pretty cool, and there might even be a bonus after that.

Home of Leanderthal Lady

The first thing I promise you didn’t know about Leander is that Neanderthals used to live there. So, in 1982, the Texas Department of Transportation was doing some research on some roads. They were going to build a highway out in Leander and came across this tomb. It was the oldest and one of North America’s most complete skeleton finds. Carbon dating puts it back to being 10,000 to 13,000 years old. It was a nearly complete woman skeleton.

She was about five feet, three inches tall. She was about 30 years old at the time of her death, and because of her proximity to Leander, they call her Leanderthal lady or Leanne for short. She was obviously buried with a lot of care. They found her with a lot of tools surrounding her. One was a grinding tool she probably used to grind grains. Another was a shark’s tooth, of course. They found her at the Wilson Leonard Brushy Creek site, which has a lot of history about people who lived here in prehistoric times.

Baghdad to Leander

About 10,000 to 13,000 years after Leanne was buried, Leander was founded. The original location was about a mile west of where it is now, called Baghdad. So it was named Baghdad by one of the early settlers, who named it after his hometown, Baghdad, Tennessee. And this was in 1855. There’s still a Baghdad Street in Leander. If you ever wondered where that name was from. That’s what Leander was initially called when it was in its original location.

About 1881, the railroad started coming through the Leander area, and it would connect Austin to Abilene. It looked like it was going straight through Baghdad, but it went about a mile east.

So many folks in Baghdad moved east to where the railroad would be because that was clearly where all the commerce, industry, and stuff would happen. And they moved so that they could buy land from the railroad company.

The town that everyone moved to became what is now known as Leander. It was named after Leander Catfish Brown. What an awesome nickname. He was one of the executives of the railroad company that set up the station in Leander and was also a former mayor of Austin.

Low Cost of Living in Leander

The third thing you probably didn’t know about Leander is the relatively low cost of living. It’s about 4.7% below the national average. That will start creeping up as we consider that housing prices continue to increase.

So, Austin’s living cost is at or below the national average for everything except housing. But for housing, Austin is 60% higher than the national average. That brings up the Austin cost of living to about 20% above the average. Right now, Leander is just about 5% below the national cost of living, but I see that increasing as home prices rise.

Leander Has Awesome Schools

The fourth thing is that Leander has incredible schools. It is one of the best school districts in Austin. Thanks to Leander’s rapid development, it’s the tenth fastest-growing school district in the United States.

Greatschools.org is a resource I like to use when checking out schools, not just their test scores but the preparation they give their students for college, their learning trends, and things like that. Please go check it out.

The site will give you some overall information about each school district and then each school. So this one school district is great, but the elementary school is not as good as the one in this neighborhood. So you can look at all that information and dial down which area you want to live in to get to these particular schools.

The Moneyed Class of Leander

The fifth thing that you didn’t know about Leander is that it has one of the wealthiest zip codes of any area surrounding Austin. Including Travis, Williamson, Caldwell, Hayes, and Bastrop Counties counties, Leander ranks 20th as far as the wealthiest zip codes, 20 out of the top 50. The wealthiest zip code will be in Austin proper, where homes are 500 plus per square foot, but Leander ranks 20th out of those.

Leander is a majority white-collar town. Over 40% of the adults there have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. A lot of the new development is meant to attract the residents who want to live around some of the cool stuff around Austin but want to live in something other than Austin. So employers will come because they are looking for highly educated employees who they know aren’t all in Austin proper.

Austin is growing so much, and not all people coming want to live downtown or in the hustle and bustle of the big city. Employers cater to those folks and establish offices further out in the suburbs.

The Rapid Growth in Leander

So the sixth thing that you didn’t know about Leander is that there’s insane growth coming. There’s been a lot of residential growth. We talked about a bunch of the new construction areas that are going up around Leander, and now that will start being filled with the commercial side so that we have grocery stores, shops, restaurants, and things to do.

So, if you’ve read any of my other blog posts, you’ve heard me talk about the Domain, a cool live-work-play area that’s supposed to mimic downtown so you don’t have to go downtown for good restaurants, fun stuff to do, and the like. Leander is building at least four of them. I will give you a brief rundown of them quickly, but this is some of the growth coming to Leander that most people need to learn about.

The first two are the big ones. One is called Northline. It will have a new train station for our commuter rail. We have a basic commuter rail in Austin. It’s growing and will become much more robust over the next few years. One of the ways it’s succeeding is by adding a station in the new area of Leander called Northline.

It will be a vast 115-acre live-work-play area. It will have apartments, office space, commercial space, retail, restaurants, parks, etc.

The second fantastic live-work-play area is called Leander Springs. It will be 80 acres, and four will be an artificial crystal clear lagoon, which is crazy, but of course, we need a lagoon in Leander.

They want it to be an excellent place for residents and a destination for other folks in the area, such as New Braunfels, Taylor, or Killeen. They don’t have to go all the way downtown for fun stuff.

The third live-work-play area is called Monarch. It will be 50 acres. It will have residential and commercial spaces.

One of Austin’s excellent builders, Scott Felder, has signed on to be one of the developers in the area. So it’s going to have a focus on high quality. Scott Felder only builds in some communities in Austin. They’re very selective about where they build. The construction quality is excellent. Their people are wonderful to work with.

If you can’t tell, I’m a huge Scott Felder fan. So, when I see that Scott Felder’s name is on this development, this will be high-end.

The fourth live-work-play area is called 29 Gateway. It will be 32 acres, with lots of commercial space, open park space, and luxury apartments, and they’re going to have a complex with a rooftop pool and a parking garage.

This is what the developer of 29 Gateway has to say about the project: Leander has a highly educated population with high-income learners who will be very attractive to brands. There is a lower vacancy and a higher demand in Leander.

This project is likely to exceed most people’s expectations. Most folks need to understand just how big Leander will be in terms of the residential space that people moving there will need. And then, with all of these fantastic new commercial developments coming in, it will drive people who live in Austin or Round Rock, Cedar Park, or Pflugerville.

This is going to be a place for everyone to come. So there’s a tendency to think conservatively and that we don’t need all this space. Can we fill it?

With all the development, I don’t think there will be any trouble filling the commercial space. It’s not like we will build shopping centers where everything will be empty. This is going to be a very high-demand area.

Some prospective tenants they’re looking at for 29 Gateway are recognizable quick-service and sit-down restaurants. So, something like Chipotle as well as Flemings.

I think it’s not that high-end. Who knows? Corporate offices, regional medical offices, banks, Montessori schools, etc. It is a robust area with a lot of professional industry in it.

It’s The Fastest Growing City

Number seven: Leander was named the fastest-growing city in the US from 2018 to 2019. We had a 12% growth in that year. That’s huge.

Most people think of Leander as just being, oh, the suburb north of Cedar Park. There’s not much going on there. It is like the secret silent grower. It’s going crazy. Many people are moving here, and Leander will explode with all the growth happening on the residential and commercial sides.

Leander: The Fifth Best Suburb to Move to

The eighth thing you didn’t know about Leander is that this year, in 2021, it was named the fifth-best suburb to move to in America. So that’s from homes.com, and they base it on nine factors, some of which were average yard size, racial diversity, home sizes, and school districts.

We had talked about Leander’s excellent School district, which played a significant role in it. That’s something that many people look at when considering where to move, especially families who either have kids or are going to have kids. How good are the schools? Am I going to have to go to just this one good school in the area, or are most schools in the district doing a good job?

There are a lot of factors that are driving this growth. So, I will go through some things that make Leander attractive and why people are moving here.

One is the low cost of living. We discussed it having a cost of living that’s 4.7% lower than the national average. That’s awesome. Award-winning school system: the Leander ISD is the 10th fastest-growing school district in the US.

UT and ACC, the Austin Community College, are the region’s two most prominent institutions for higher learning. ACC has many locations, and UT is just a short drive from Leander. Those two things drive folks to come to the area for education.

So we discussed the Northline and how that will add a commuter rail station to Leander. Another reason Leander is experiencing this growth is that it will give us access to that commuter rail so we can get downtown more quickly.

Leander also has easy access to Hill Country. So there are many opportunities for stuff you want to do artistically for entertainment or just getting away. Just a short drive down there for a quick weekend, a winery trip, a farm trip, or anything you want. People are moving to Leander for many reasons, and it’s growing so much and being recognized nationally.

Lots of Outdoor Activities

The ninth thing that you didn’t know about Leander is that there’s a ton of stuff to do outside, tons of parks. One of the most extraordinary things is Lake Travis Zipline Adventures. It is the longest zip line in Texas.

It’s two and a half hours. I don’t think you have to do the whole thing if you don’t want to, but I would give it a shot. They’ve got amazing views of Lake Travis, and all the greenery and everything around is gorgeous.

There’s also a ton of parks. There’s one humongous park that’s 47 acres. It’s got a BMX trail, a disc golf course, soccer fields, skate parks, playgrounds, and hike and bike trails. Just awesome. All the stuff you want to do outside this park is the place to go.

Old Town Leander is like the downtown area. There are tons of shops, breweries, wineries, and restaurants. They have a street festival in the summer, and in the winter, they have a Christmas fest during the holidays and a farmer’s market there on the weekends. So, there is lots of stuff to do outside.

There’s also a Crystal Falls golf course in Leander. Crystal Falls is one of the charming and humongous neighborhoods in Leander. My friend lives there. It takes her five to 10 minutes to get out of the neighborhood and then drive to the grocery store and everything, but it’s in a very hilly area of Leander.

The topography is gorgeous. You can look over the canyons and see the houses on the other side. There are many things to do outside and many activities in Leander.

The Best Breweries

Number 10 is for the beer nerds out there. So, if you didn’t know, my husband and I have home-brewed for 10-plus years. We haven’t done it so much in the past few years because life just gets wild. But one of the coolest things about Leander is that this is where Blacklands Malt is. If you didn’t know anything about them, before they were founded in 2012, no grain, wheat, barley, or rye was grown and malted in Texas for brewing and distilling beer and spirits.

Beer is made with malted grain. So you grow it, malt it, roast it, and get different toasty notes and flavors out of it. You extract the sugars, do a few other processes, and then make beer. The process is similar to distilling spirits and things like that.

Texas is so huge, but we didn’t have our own maltsters until these folks opened in 2012, and now they have revitalized the Texas Grown malting barley scene and have given Texas brewers access to local malt for the first time that beer has ever been brewed in Texas.

It’s fascinating. A lot of the local breweries use Black Lands Malt. Austin is a we-live-here-we-give-here town. Keep Austin local. So Austin has a ton of breweries, and at any opportunity that we can support local businesses, we want to do that, especially when it’s like a revolutionary company like Blacklands Malt.

Some of the breweries that use their malts are Jester King. We talked about them being out in the Hill country. Oscar Blues, Black Star Co-op, Austin Beer Works, Oddwood ales, and Lazarus Brewing.

My husband and I have been to all these breweries in Austin. They’re probably some of the best ones out there. Austin’s got new breweries popping up all the time, but you’ll know the ones that stand the test of time, and those are the quality breweries you want to check out. These are the best breweries in Austin, and they’re using Blacklands Malt. Leander is a cool spot for beer nerds because that is where Blacklands is located.

So here is your bonus 11th thing you didn’t know about Leander. We know that there’s a ton of construction and growth and residential stuff going on right now, and that’s the majority of homes being built today, like dirt in the ground. But there will soon be a landscape shift in Leander with these live-work-play projects that are coming up and just with the overall consensus and direction of housing in general.

We have almost always built single-family homes like tract neighborhoods. We’ve got the house, the yard, the two or three-car garage, and everything, and that’s awesome. But there are so many people moving to Leander that we need to catch up with the housing demand, the number of houses, and the amount of space required for everyone to have a single-family home.

So, there is going to be a lot more development and focus on multi-family construction, multi-family structures, and homes in Leander. And a lot of that is coming with the live-work-play areas. They’re going to have residences to rent and buy that will be multi-family homes. So, that will be one of the primary focuses for the developments coming in Leander.

I have to say what I tell my clients right now is there’s not a whole lot in Leander now, at least in the new construction area, but you just hold on two years, and everything is coming this way. It will explode if you want to get in on something on the ground floor in Austin. It’s too late to do it pretty much anywhere else in town. But Leander is the best bet in Austin right now.

There’s just so much growth and development that is coming that it’s going to take what we have now and just make it look like it’s peanuts.

So, tons of stuff is happening in Leander. Now is the time to get in on it. It will probably take a couple of years for things to get up and running, and after that, it will start exploding and going crazy. Get it touch with me if you want to move to Leander.

So the next time someone tells you that, oh, you have to buy downtown or you have to live in Lakeway. If you want something nice, tell them what is going on. Tell them what’s really happening in their backyard and Leander that it may look like nothing’s going on now. I promise you, most people are not driving up there. They have no idea.

Now you know about all the crazy residential stuff happening, and now you have the secret on the commercial projects that most people in Austin don’t even know about. So this is what’s happening here. Tell all your friends, and they will think you are a superstar.