A Dallas real estate firm has sold a Bee Cave business park to aerospace technology company CesiumAstro, ending a year-long legal dispute over a controversial warehouse project at the site.
Velocis announced Friday that CesiumAstro will take over the property. This is expected to fuel the company’s expansion with more than $500 million in investment and the creation of more than 500 jobs in the coming years.
The sale follows more than a year of negotiations after the site, initially slated for warehouse use, drew community opposition. In January, the city of Bee Cave reached a settlement with CesiumAstro to purchase the land.
Residents and city officials had raised concerns about safety and traffic from 18-wheelers traveling near State Highway 71.
“There’s moms pushing their kids in strollers, there’s people going to work and to school, and having a semi come around a blind curve — we were confident this was a massive safety risk,” Bee Cave Mayor Kara King told KVUE in January.
Under the settlement, 76 planned loading bays will be reduced to four, with the remaining spaces converted into windows for office use. The agreement will lower truck traffic from potentially hundreds or even 1,000 trips per month to no more than eight — each requiring a police escort and 24-hour notice to Bee Cave police.
The city also restricted the site’s use to office or mixed-use purposes, permanently barring future warehouse or distribution operations.
“This wasn’t a couple years’ fix and then rewind and go back to a last-mile facility,” King said. “The city wanted to ensure the buildings could never be converted back into an industrial warehouse.”
Velocis and KBC, the site’s developers, also donated $500,000 to the city as part of the settlement. A Velocis spokesperson previously told KVUE the agreement represented “an important step toward finalizing a transaction on the property and creating a beneficial outcome for all parties.”
