SpaceX employees submitted a formal petition to create the city of Starbase.

Its first mayor would be a company security officer.

In recent years, Elon Musk has expanded his footprint in Texas, moving his companies from California and building offices, warehouses, and factories in an increasing number of Texas counties.

Now, Musk is trying to do something that few industrial titans, if any, have done in a century: create his own company town (Editorial note: at least Henry Ford had already done it in Brazil more than a century ago, which ended in a complete failure).

Musk has long spoken of his desire to create a new city—he hopes to call it Starbase—on the southern Texas coast, where his rocket-launching company, SpaceX, is headquartered.

For years, the plan showed no signs of advancing officially, partly because creating a new municipality in Texas requires a certain number of residents and the support of most voters.

But during this time, SpaceX employees have been filling a series of newly renovated mid-century homes and temporary housing—some in the form of silver Airstream trailers—under the shadow of the company’s rockets.

This month, the company’s employees living around its offices and launch site took the first major step toward establishing a city, gathering signatures and submitting an official petition to hold elections.

The petition, submitted to senior officials in Cameron County and shared with The New York Times via a public records request, provides some of the first details about the size and functioning of the new city that Musk and his company are envisioning.

If authorized by the county, the elections would allow voters to elect three new municipal officials, including the first mayor of the city.

The petition suggests that the mayor would be SpaceX’s director of security, Gunnar Milburn.

“This is a very unique situation,” said Alan Bojorquez, an attorney in Austin specializing in helping groups of Texas residents in the process of forming new cities.

He said he had never helped a company that wanted its employees to form their own city.

Genesis:

The Starbase petition describes a community of about 500 current residents, including at least 219 primary residents and more than 100 children, in an area at the end of State Highway 4, next to Boca Chica Beach, where SpaceX launches many of its rockets.

The city would span around 4 square kilometers, a slightly larger area than Central Park, but small by Texas standards.

According to the petition, nearly everyone rents and works at SpaceX.

There are few examples of such company towns in Texas, although there is one north of Houston where the founder of the Texas Renaissance Festival created the town of Todd Mission and became its mayor.

And Musk may not be satisfied with just one new city.

He has already looked into the possibility of housing employees in a development on the outskirts of Bastrop, near Austin.

The area hosts a rapidly growing campus for Musk’s companies, including a manufacturing plant for SpaceX; the headquarters of the Boring Company, which is creating tunnel construction technology; and, soon, offices for the social media platform X.

The petition did not clarify why Musk and his company wanted to create the new city of Starbase or what benefit they might gain from it.

Bojorquez pointed out that most new cities are created by people living in unincorporated areas who want to prevent their area from being absorbed by an expanding city or to stop a particularly undesirable business from setting up in the area.

The new city proposed by Musk could create its own police or fire departments, or enact its own ordinances.

But it wouldn’t have to do so.

“The law requires cities to do very little,” said Bojorquez.

One of the biggest practical issues is road maintenance, which would no longer be the responsibility of the county.

Of course, incorporation allows communities to elect their own local leaders and also create municipal systems for public services like water.

As a city, Starbase could apply for state and federal grants, enjoy certain immunity from lawsuits, and also have the power to seize property, Bojorquez said.

In a letter included with the petition, Kathryn Lueders, SpaceX’s general manager for Starbase, said the company needed “the ability to grow Starbase as a community,” noting that SpaceX “currently performs civic functions” due to its remote location, including managing public services and providing educational and medical assistance.

“Incorporation would transfer the management of some of these functions to a more appropriate public entity,” Lueders wrote in her letter to the Cameron County judge, who is the county’s chief official and must approve the petition if it meets all legal requirements.

Opposition:

For years, SpaceX has faced local opposition from environmental groups in Cameron County regarding the frequent and large-scale launches’ impact on nearby protected coastal ecology.

And residents and officials from Brownsville, about 32 kilometers away, have sometimes complained that the launches close roads and block beach access.

Previously, the company had seemed only interested in changing the area’s name for postal purposes.

A request for that is pending with a federal agency.

“We thought that’s what they were really after, but I guess they wanted to expand it a little further,” said County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. in an interview.

“Obviously, they think there’s some advantage.”

Treviño said the county’s legal team and election office were reviewing the petition to see if it met legal requirements.

“I’m waiting for them to get back to me,” he said. An election could be called next year.

The proposed new mayor, Milburn, declined to comment when contacted by phone on Monday.

So did others who signed the petition.

Cayetana Polanco, who lives on Memes Street within the proposed new city, said she looked forward to the creation of Starbase and hoped it could become “a model of what new cities should be.”

She mentioned that she did not work for SpaceX, but her husband did.

“If everything goes well with this petition, my baby could be the first child born in this city,” she added.

“It would be pretty epic!”

Almost all the residents in the area work for SpaceX or have family members who do.

Most live in company-owned houses grouped around its main buildings, including at least one restaurant open only to SpaceX employees.

“SpaceX is the primary landowner in the area proposed for Starbase and, with few exceptions, owns all of the real estate,” wrote Richard Cardile, SpaceX’s spaceport operations director, in a sworn statement as part of the petition.

The company, he added, maintains “detailed records of all individuals who reside in each housing unit in the proposed Starbase city.”

For these reasons, if county officials give the green light to an election, it seems likely that voters will support it.

One of them, presumably, would be Musk himself. He was not among those who signed the petition, but he has a residence in Cameron County and has said he voted there in November.

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Alain Delaquérière contributed to the reporting.

J. David Goodman is the bureau chief for The New York Times in Houston, where he covers Texas and Oklahoma.

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