Base Power wants to swap its makeshift downtown production line for a full-blown manufacturing campus next to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, and it is asking City Hall to help close the gap. The energy startup is pitching a 486,000-square-foot plant and roughly $265 million in investment, a buildout it says would bring hundreds of factory jobs to the city’s southeast industrial corridor. City staff have already circulated a draft incentive agreement, setting the stage for a public debate at City Council.
According to staff documents, the proposed deal would make Base Power eligible for up to $4,850,000 in payments over 10 years through Austin’s Business Expansion Program, if the company creates 500 full-time jobs and keeps at least 100 positions on the books. Staff project the arrangement would return nearly $10,000,000 in total benefits to the city, KVUE reports. Those incentive payments would be tied to performance milestones and stretched out across a decade, and the station notes the item is headed to the City Council agenda in the coming weeks.
Base Power was founded in 2023 by Zach Dell and Justin Lopas and has been operating out of a temporary production line inside the former Austin American-Statesman complex while it scales up, as reported by the Houston Chronicle. The downtown test facility has served as a proving ground for early hiring and equipment shakedowns ahead of a permanent move. Company leaders have said they expect any long-term factory to be significantly larger than the stopgap operation on the lakefront.
Site and size details
On paper, the permanent home would land in the MetCenter business park near Austin-Bergstrom. Commercial listings identify multiple industrial buildings at 8001 Metropolis Drive within the MetCenter Flex & Industrial Campus, a cluster built for large-format users. Those listings indicate the park is set up for substantial manufacturing and logistics activity, according to PropertyShark. City staff have outlined the proposed footprint and infrastructure needs for the Base Power campus as part of their recommendation packet.
What City Officials Are Weighing
The financial carrot on the table would run through the City of Austin’s Business Expansion Program, a performance-based incentive tool the city uses to recruit and retain employers, per the city’s incentives page. Payouts under that program hinge on documented job creation, minimum investment, and ongoing compliance checks, and the framework has been applied to other major expansions. Council members will be weighing the projected tax revenue, job numbers, and long-term economic ripple effects against the public cost before they take a vote.
Why this matters for jobs and the grid
Base Power’s core play is bundling residential battery hardware with electricity service, then operating those batteries as a distributed resource that can be bid into grid markets, a model that has helped the startup scale deployments and attract significant funding, Canary Media reports. Executives have said the shift from outsourced assembly to in-house manufacturing is key to growing the business and cutting costs for customers. Locking in a permanent factory in southeast Austin would also plant more clean-energy manufacturing and middle-skill jobs in and around the airport corridor.
Next steps
The council process will ultimately decide whether the incentive package goes through and, if it does, whether Base Power actually hits the performance marks that would trigger city payments. The company has not responded to a request for comment, according to KVUE.
Whichever way the vote lands, plenty of eyes will be on this one as Austin tries to balance its appetite for cleantech jobs with skepticism about corporate incentives, all while wooing bigger industrial projects around the airport. Council members and nearby residents will be looking for firm timelines, training pipelines, and concrete community benefits if the deal advances.
