Following Through

Third in a series on cities with a vision to win big in sports tourism -- and beyond

Round Rock didn’t set out to become the Sports Capital of Texas back in the early 2000s. City leaders were simply exploring new ways to expand and diversify the local economy. It’s something they had been doing with alacrity since the 1970s, when Westinghouse built a large factory on the north end of town to produce industrial electric motors. More large employers followed suit, most notably Dell Technologies in 1994.

As the City Council surveyed the economic landscape in the late 1990s, there was a missing element: tourism. But if you looked around at the literal landscape, you had to squint awfully hard to see a future in that industry. Most of Round Rock, which is just north of Austin, sits on the Blackland Prairie, not the more picturesque Texas Hill Country. A natural beauty, she’s not. It’s hard to gussy up the kind of strip development that typically occurs on an interstate highway like the one that bisects the community.

What Round Rock (where I worked for nearly 24 years) did have was a love of baseball and a focus on creating amenities for families with young children. So, some really nice youth ballfields were built at 640-acre Old Settlers Park. In 1998, when Hall of Fame pitcher and Texas legend Nolan Ryan was looking for a home for his recently purchased minor league baseball team, he fell in love with the idea of a stadium next to the park where the kids played. Thus was born the Dell Diamond, which opened in 2000 after voters overwhelmingly approved the use of hotel occupancy tax (HOT) revenue to pay for the City’s share of it.

It took the practiced eyes of consultant Roger Brooks to see what kind of tourism program could be built on that foundation. He presented his assessment at a City Council planning retreat. The way Roger described it, you didn’t have to squint hard at all to see how you could draw tourists in the form of moms, dads, brothers, sisters, grandmas and grandpas, who would gladly spend a night or two and a few hundred bucks or so in Round Rock to watch their favorite son, daughter, sibling or grandkid play in a tournament. Youth sports was becoming big business, and since Round Rock was less than three-hours’ drive for about 90 percent of the state’s population, why the hell couldn’t it be the Sports Capital of Texas?

Swing And A Hit

It just took the proper marketing and a commitment to build more tournament-grade facilities. Nancy Yawn and the Round Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau took care of the marketing. A City Council focused on finding and growing new sources of revenue led the way on facilities.

Mayor Craig Morgan said growing the tourism program, by funding new facilities primarily with HOT revenues, was a no-brainer for a community long focused on economic growth.

“Tourism is the purest form of economic development,” Mayor Morgan said. “And you have such a trickle-down effect from tourism because when you have people come into your community, they’re spending money (and) that creates a higher sales tax revenue, they're staying in your hotels, (and) that creates higher hotel tax revenue, and then they leave.”

By leaving, they have minimal impact on public safety services — the largest chunk of the general fund budget — as well as utilities. So you have visitors helping pay for local services and amenities. What’s not to love about that? That said, tourism isn’t without some downsides, Morgan adds.

“Can it be a headache at times with the number of people here because increased traffic? Sure,” he said. “But I would argue that’s one of the reasons we have been able to keep Round Rock with one of the lowest tax rates in the state, and for sure in Central Texas, for a city our size.”

Here’s the receipt:

This is the one list where you want your city to be last. The Texas cities included on this list are similar to Round Rock in size or are located in Central Texas. Credit: City of Round Rock

Lest you think amateur and youth sports can’t move the needle economically, consider this: According to the Sports Events and Tourism Association, $39.7 billion on the direct spending impact of amateur and youth sports tourism in 2021 generated a total economic impact of $91.8 billion, which resulted in the generation of 635,000 jobs and a total tax revenue of $12.9 billion for the local economies.

In other words, you don’t need Taylor Swift selling out Jerry World three nights in a row to reap measurable rewards from sports venues. Though it’s sure nice, as chronicled in Part 1 of this series.

Local governments in Texas are restricted in how they can spend HOT revenues. By law, they need to be plowed back into facilities and events that put “heads in beds,” in industry parlance, i.e., generate hotel stays. But the state does allow a percentage of HOT funds to be used for tourism-adjacent programs like historic preservation and the arts, which is what happens with the $13 million in annual HOT funds collected in Round Rock. Which is nice.

But the bulk of the funds are spent building and maintaining facilities like the Dell Diamond, Round Rock Sports Center and Round Rock Multipurpose Center. Have a look:

The great thing about those facilities — outside of the Dell Diamond — is that local folks get to play on them, too. For example, of the events and practices held at the outdoor Multipurpose Complex over the past year, approximately 75 percent were local teams and 25 percent were out-of-town/sports tourism-focused. And that’s sure nice, similar to the benefit in the City of Frisco, Texas, as chronicled in Part 2 of this series.

Property tax revenues help pay a portion of construction costs, too, and based on the results of a 2023 bond election, locals are happy to share the load. Nearly 7 in 10 voted to approve $230 million for parks, recreation and sports projects, a portion of which will be used to expand the Round Rock Sports Center and the Round Rock Multipurpose Complex.

Round Rock Mayor Craig Morgan, second from right, in a familiar scene — cutting the ribbon on improvements to city ballfields.

Clearly, the City Council’s vision for amateur sports tourism has succeeded. Round Rock has gone from hosting local tournaments to being the home of national tournaments in lacrosse, table tennis and even Quidditch, as well as the Big 12 Women’s Soccer Championships, which is televised by ESPN. Event planners are happy to share why they chose Round Rock, as you’ll see below.

And The Hits Keep On Coming

So, the City can check the box on building a successful tourism program from scratch. But, as we saw with Arlington and Frisco, leaders in Round Rock knew they could achieve more. The more in Round Rock’s case was a subset of the tourism industry, the convention business.

The successful recruitment of Kalahari Resorts and Conventions began in 2016. Four years later, Kalahari opened its $550 million, 1.5 million square foot facility in Round Rock.

What the video doesn’t show is the blood, sweat and tears that took place over two years to get the deal done. I’ll do a deep dive on the Kalahari project in a later post. (Teaser: it started with a cold call to Kalahari headquarters in Wisconsin.)

For Mayor Morgan, going after Kalahari was a natural for a City whose brand is success.

“I think for us, we were always kind of looking for that next big thing,” he said. “We do capitalize a lot on our sports tourism, all amateur sports. But we did lack in conventions. And the thing that excited me the most about the Kalahari deal and being in the tourism industry prior to this is the convention space.”

And what an amazing convention space they have. It’s 200,000 square feet of meeting space for conventions large and small, as well as weddings, mitzvahs, Quinceañeras and more.

The Mayor notes occupancies at other hotels and motels have gone up due to Kalahari’s presence. Which, he notes, was part of the plan.

“They have helped raise occupancies in some of our other hotels,” Mayor Morgan said. “It's just too big not to. But that was all strategic, right? That was strategic. It was (City leaders) looking for what was the best thing.”

So, we’ve come full circle on the superpower of vision married to strategic planning. I’ll share again a chart¹ we showed in the Results Count post (CC stands for City Council).

That CC Envisions step is our focus today. Mayor Morgan, an attorney whose day job puts him in contact with elected officials across the state, sees what happens when visioning and strategic planning are not a regular part of an elected body’s work program.

“I see so many cities react to whatever the emergency is or react to whatever happens,” he said. “I think what strategic planning does, and if you stick to it and you do it, and what I’ve seen, is it makes a city very proactive versus very reactive. And that’s where I think Round Rock’s really done great. Not because of anything I’ve done. I think this (current) City Council has just continued what has always been done.”

Indeed, none of the current Councilmembers were sitting on the dais when the tourism program launched 20 years ago. But they have been smart enough to take ownership of the visioning and planning practices they inherited. Does it mean they are in lock step? Absolutely not. Mayor Morgan notes City Councilmembers’ governing philosophies span the political spectrum. He also notes they treat each other civilly when there are disagreements.

“We have some Republicans on our council, and we have some Democrats, but we get up there and we have conversations and in these (planning) retreats we have open conversations, and we don’t always agree, but we’re very respectful,” Mayor Morgan said. “And then we get to a point where the majority vote wins the day to carry on the goals and the plans.”

It’s been that way for most of the 34 years I’ve been paying close attention to the Round Rock City Council. I think it’s because Councilmembers understand their role in setting the vision and then letting City staff play its role to implement the plans and policies they vote on.

“The worst type of elected official is someone that gets in the city manager’s business on a day-to-day basis,” Morgan said. “It (the City Council) sets the policies and the action items for the city manager and her team to go implement. And when you can do that and focus on core services and not politics, then good things happen. And I think the cities that are successful are the ones that don’t let the political noise creep in. And it’s harder and harder every year. This is my twelfth year, and it gets harder and harder every year.”

Why? I asked the same question. And Mayor Morgan, as he is wont to do, gave me a straightforward answer. But that gets us beyond today’s topic. Rest assured, the why’s behind the decaying state of our politics will be the focus of a future installment of Good Government Files.

Onward and Upward.

1. Chart created by SGR, for whom I do consulting on a part-time basis.