Ashton Gray developments saturate Austin suburbs

Ashton Gray is supersizing a mixed-use development in north Bastrop County, adding to its slew of projects in the Austin suburbs. 

The Houston-based firm was recently greenlit by the Elgin City Council to annex 75 acres into Briarwood, a 205-acre community slated for 772 single-family homes that’s also the city’s first municipal utility district. The additional land will feature 182 townhomes, 19 acres of mixed-use, multifamily or commercial development and 43 additional acres of parkland. 

Briarwood only scratches the surface of what the developer has in store for the region, though. Ashton Gray aims to deliver more than 5,300 single-family homes, plus apartments and commercial space, to the Austin area, with projects in Manor, Leander, Hutto, Jarrell and Lockhart, the Austin Business Journal reported. 

“We started acquiring land in Austin several years ago,” Shaun Vembutty, Ashton Gray founder and president, told the outlet. “This was even before some of the buying frenzy that started happening right after the Tesla (gigafactory) was announced and all the associated attention that it brought.”

In Manor, which is just west of Elgin and northeast of downtown Austin, Ashton Gray is embarking on a 94-acre community called Newhaven. It’s set to include 278 single-family lots and 2.5 acres of commercial space. Homebuilders Chesmar, Brightland and Westin Homes have jumped on board.

Ashton Gray is plotting an ambitious mixed-use project in Hutto, a northern suburb that’s experiencing a surge in large-scale developments, including a $10 billion data center campus at a “megasite” along U.S. Route 79. The project, dubbed Limmer Loop, is slated for 205 single-family homes, 200 townhomes, 300 multifamily units and 10-acres of commercial use. 

In the booming north suburb of Leander, Ashton Gray, in partnership with Toll Brothers and SVAG Construction, is spearheading Woodland Estates, an 86-home community spanning 120 acres.

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South of Austin, the firm wants to bring a 902-acre community to Lockhart, the county seat of Caldwell County. The JK Ranch development will feature over 2,000 single-family dwellings, 13 acres of apartments and another 13 acres of build-to-rent homes, the outlet said.

In Jarrell, which is the tiniest town among Ashton Gray’s Austin-area projects, the firm looks to build 1,380 single-family homes across 519 acres. That project, called Highland Creek, will also have about 200 acres of green space. 

—Quinn Donoghue