When I last passed by Barton Springs Pool, I also checked out Eliza Springs, the cool amphitheater-type pool next to the playscape, to see if there were any alligators in it.  I don’t know if I really ever saw an alligator living there or if it’s just one of those thing I remember because I was told as a kid and believed it… but the sign at Eliza says that no alligators live there.  Much to my surprise, there was a lot of activity in the pool.  People were acting as much like alligators as they could, except instead of trying to eat the salamanders that live there, which are protected species, they were simply “researching” them. 

As you hopefully know, the water at Barton Springs and the adjacent springs comes from the highly porous Edwards Aquifer.  Anything that gets dumped over the ground - motor oil, fertilizer for grass, diazonon to kill ants - eventually makes its way into the aquifer and then to the Springs and some people’s drinking water.

You may have read my post earlier this week about Oak Hill’s neighborhood plan.  Well, what happens in Oak Hill and Southwest Austin affects the treasure that is the aquifer and Barton Springs.  And now, dear citizens, you have an opportunity to comment on the plans for that area, without leaving the comfort of your desk.  Nope, no all-night council meeting required (yet).  Just go to the city’s survey about the Oak Hill plan and fill it out. You know the friends of developers will.

Then, to reward yourself for your participation, go on down to Barton Springs this Saturday for Free Swim Day (according to an email newsletter from the Save Our Springs Alliance, whose web site seems to be hosed at the moment)!

So if you bother to move to the outskirts of Austin, you must be doing so to get a big house on a big lot on a quiet street, close to “good” schools, for much cheaper than Central Austin. If you do so, you have no right to complain that you can’t walk to the store.

Well, people in Oak Hill and Southwest Austin apparently want their cake and to eat it too. As much as I am an avid proponent of denser development and public transit, I find it disingenuous of the community leaders in that area to now start blaming the Save Our Springs ordinance for the fact that their neighborhoods aren’t (and may never be) more pedestrian friendly and dense.

Tomorrow night, the city’s planning staff will present the tentative Future Land Use Map (FLUM) and plan documents to stakeholders for one last discussion before the planning commission and city council vote on it. David Richardson, who lead the effort at the neighborhood level, complains to Community Impact that the SOS ordinance blocks any and every kind of good development because

landowners cannot develop or put impervious cover, which is anything from rooftops to parking lots, over more than 25 percent of an individual landowner’s property, in the area called the contributing zone.

Mr. Richardson complains that you can’t put in denser muliple-use development that would make walking and biking more appealing because of the “roadblocks” like this.

The SOS ordinance *should* be a roadblock. Its intent is to discourage development, which causes water pollution in the sensitive contributing zone and the more sensitive recharge zone of the Edwards Aquifer. If you want to live in a densely developed area, move to Central Austin!

Only listeners to KVET seemed to be following this issue up until a day or so ago. Up until about that time, it was not under discussion on neighborhood listservs around town, which leads me to conclude that more people should be reading the local daily and the Chron from cover to cover, not to mention listening to KVET. There’s a resolution forming the “Energy Efficient Retrofit Task Force” with an unwieldy number of members. The task force is due to report to the city council on or before June 1 (see agenda item 64 from December 13). Its next meeting is set for tomorrow. Today’s newspaper feature has given the gift of greater visibility to the Keep Austin Affordable site (”Austin Realtors question plan to require efficiency upgrades for older homes: City says complaints are premature, alarmist,” byline Katie Humphrey).

Why should those of us who seldom or never consume over 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity pay for the ever-growing consumption caused by those evidently compelled to build in a cornfield, tear down a perfectly good structure and construct a monster in its place, or “remodel” by expanding an existing house by four or five times? Only this morning, we learned that additional tree limbs will be sacrificed in our vicinity to add a transformer “required” because voltage is now “insufficient.” Somebody’s recently installed multi-kitchens and other upgrades and proliferations of electricity-operated conveniences in a bloated edifice demand this service upgrade; not only that, another outfit of the same sort will soon be completed and is likely to “require” the same sort of service upgrade, with accompanying destruction.

So much for affordable housing. So much for preserving Austin’s shade canopy.

Thanks for all the great comments on my post of last week about the potential development of a number of lots on South 1st street for VMU. I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but I really hadn’t heard, been told, emailed or otherwise heard any gossip etc. about the development of any of the properties mentioned.

I set off this morning to walk down S 1st to drop my weeks shirts at Capitol Cleaners on S 1st. There it was, it wasn’t there yesterday, a big board advertising the “Live at Elizabeth” development, 24 luxury condos and commercial space, on the east side of south 1st on 3-floors, right opposite Bouldin Creek Coffee shop, official address 1407 South 1st.

It’s described as a “mixed use” development, and is being done by architect Michael Hsu and local developer Scott Trainer. Jon Hill at Travis Real Estate confirmed by phone it is being done as a Mixed Use development, so no affordable housing, but it does mean they’ve had to include the required number of parking spaces, some 40-odd.

At the risk of just seeming like another Cheerleader, or a bore, I thought I’d follow-up on Lauratex Metblog Austin post about the Unforeseen movie.

I’d seen a trailer for the film at a previous visit to the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, I hadn’t actually got around to going to see it, you know, busy life and all that!

Lauratex said “it should be required viewing in Austin”. I say, if you moved to Austin after 1995, or were not old enough to remember the Circle C/Barton Springs fight, maybe like me you thought George Bush only started to mess up when he got to the White House, this is the best use of 90-minutes of your time this week!

I know I don’t really know much about Austin, I know “keep Austin weird” isn’t just a bumper sticker but really I had no idea.

While I can see that there are many people who wouldn’t agree with the main message and direction the film takes, as someone that swims a Barton Springs two or three times a week, I found this film really profound and found myself weeping twice during the film. I won’t pretend to do a balanced review of the film, I don’t think I could.

The main thrust of the film is about the development of the Circle-C ranch, apparently a sub-division(another good reasons why I couldn’t turn in a balanced view of the film, I don’t understand much of the terminology used) and the impact it could have on Barton Springs. While the film could have demonised developers, it didn’t for me. It did fairly show that the balance is out of kilter when it comes to developing new, green field sites.

The film is a thought provoking cross over between documentary, story telling and historical record. I suspect that editorial changes made some of the things the people interviewed seem even more prophetic, the small boy who liked living in the new house but was concerned they’d finish the rest of the houses, as he’d have no space to play; the couple who were complaining about their inability to water their new lawn, but “people come first”; the old farmer who seemed wise well beyond his education, if not beyond his years.

The best speaker for me wasn’t Robert Redford, erudite though he was, journalist and author William Greider summed it up best for me, “Growth itself is not the enemy, it is the nature of that growth—the quality within.”

the Unforseen is still showing at the Alamo Drafthouse South, although screenings are getting fewer and fewer as the weeks go by. The current screening list is here. Yes, and that means you ttrentham.

You know how it is, when you start looking for something, you find loads of stuff.

And so it was the other day, on one of what must have been hundreds of times I’ve run up and down South 1st to get to the trail, I noticed that the lot, or at least part of it, on which Torchies Tacos sits, is up for sale or lease. On the way back up South 1st, I looked and sure enough there were a bunch of other properties up for sale.

The houses at 1906, 1708, 1609 and 1502 are all up for sale. They are all traditional single story houses. The there is the Big G Tire lot on the corner of W. Mary and the seemingly unused building on the north-east corner of Elizabeth and South 1st opposite Bouldin Creek Coffee shop.

On the other side of the road from Bouldin Creek Coffee Shop is 1502 South 1st. It has a board outside showing what the developer is planning, and although it’s only 2-stories, it has VMU style setbacks. It displays other modern design and VMU characteristics. Close to the road, street furniture, trees and replacing a single story building with a multi-story that covers most of the lot and so it’s also classic eclectic Austin vs the new.

As part of the Bouldin Creek Neighborhood Planning team that handled the VMU opt-in/opt out, it was with some surprise to me that we eventually declined to opt any properties. Certainly that was an interesting choice and not my preference since the properties on South 1st opposite the Texas school for the deaf, and the whole of the west side of South Congress from Oltorf to the Congress bridge were included, and opted-in by default.

I’m not a great candidate to discuss old vs new, I only moved to Austin in November 2006, and I bought a new house that replaced and older, single story one. However, in what ever shape VMU takes on South 1st it will be interesting to watch it unfold, trust that it won’t just be the long time Austin residents that will be concerned once VMUification starts!

Updated valuations for 2008 are up at the Travis Central Appraisal District site. The 2007 valuations have not yet been transferred to the history page, which at the moment shows numbers for the years 2000 through 2006. Until 2007 info appears on the history page, those property-owners interested in figuring the change in valuation between the 2007 certified number and the 2008 preliminary one must refer to their own records. Those not owning their habitations do not go unaffected; rents will rise to cover these increases. And the changes do seem to be increases in appraised values, not declines. The local daily quotes a local real-estate consultant as saying that these figures are a “lagging indicator of market conditions.” Are you consoled?

Ever wonder why Austin’s traffic has gotten so bad? Perhaps you don’t think it’s that bad if you’re from L.A., but it’s definitely much, much worse than it used to be. If you’re a central Austin inhabitant, you may not venture out to the ‘burbs much. Maybe you’ve been to Barton Springs Pool or hiked along Barton Creek? All of these things may not seem related, but to anyone who’s been in Austin awhile and cares about the natural environment - it’s definitely all related. And now there’s a film that starts to bring it all together - The Unforeseen. You now have another week to go see it at the Alamo Drafthouse South!

Employing a two-page spread in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (page D6, “Austin Luxury Properties,” prose byline Meta L. Levin) and plenty of quotes from local luminaries Charles Heimsath, Charles Betts, and our mayor, a certain sector of the Austin real-estate market was presented to a national audience in promotional prose and in display ads.

The promotional copy makes repeated references to Lady Bird Johnson Lake and includes two sections: “A Downtown Residential Renaissance” and “‘Live Music Capital’ Offers a Mix of Sounds.” In the second, Country & Western” were honored by upper-case letters, but rock, blues, jazz, and classical music were not. In the first, an entire paragraph is devoted to the residential preferences of our current mayor:

“In 2003, Mayor Wynn moved into a 2,476-square-foot, two-bedroom condominium apartment in towers–Austin City Lofts, 14 stories high, with prices ranging from $250,000 for an 870-square-foot, one-bdroom apartment to $1.5 million for a 3,100-square-foot, two-story loft home. From his seventh-floor apartment, the major can see the Capitol Building dome, the outskirts of Texas Hill Country and Austin’s gowing downtown skyline. A strong proponent of sustainable architecture and energy conbservation, he is more than pleased that his office is walking distance–about six blocks–from his home.”

The finances here are interesting. We all know pretty much what members of the city council earn, at least from the public budget, and we know how to find a property on the appraisal roll. This ad copy claims: “Within a two-mile radius of Sixth and Congress Streets–the heart of downtown–the average annual household income is $100,000.” This would include the close-in neighborhoods east of IH-35.

The biggest display ads in this section are paid for by urbanspace, Waterstone on Lake Travis, and residences at the Four Seasons. Smaller ads include ones for the Austonian, Bridges on the Park, and various individual properties, mostly waterside. It’s quite a while until the next legislative session. Has the pool of potential local, or even regional, buyers become exhausted?

The oft-quoted Yale economist Robert Shiller is reported opining in today’s NYT that Austin is among the smaller cities that he categorizes in that fashion (”backcountry,” says he); he is discussing smaller cities spared the worst excesses of the national rise and fall in residential real-estate values. Also quoted are an Austinite who has bought and sold his house in about a year’s time and two local real-estate agents. There’s quite a bit of analysis of the Austin market specifically, and people I’ve talked to aren’t sure that it’s accurate. See what you think: “Some Cities Are Spared the Slide in Housing,” (byline Clifford Krauss and Ron Nixon, 2/15/08 business section). It is entertaining to see Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Austin discussed as peers. Should we expect a statement from the mayor’s office?