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True Stories Can Be Stranger Than Fiction [Extra Extra ]
East Avenue Investment Group is hosting a "neighborhood appreciation party" from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the site of the new East Avenue development (formerly Concordia University). They will show renderings of the new development, which is now expected to include 1,450 condos and apartments, 600,000 square feet of office space, 325,000 square feet of retail and a 250-room hotel. For a sneak preview, look to the right of this text ->
According to the Statesman, this will be a delightfully New Urbanist development, with minimal land consumption, traffic, and energy and water use. Plus, residential, commercial and retail space will be within walking distance of each other and public transportation. Then over here you got a "sun calendar plaza," high-tech, downward facing lighting (not like them stupid old fashioned upward facing lights), and trees on top of buildings - just like in outer space! Pretty cool. Now, if only we could get rid of I-35 and bring back the original East Avenue, this would be a really exciting development.
Image from East Avenue Investment Group.
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These guys have pretty pics of the buildings but no pretty Web site (at least I couldn't find one)? Weird- and a bit of bad marketing.
And can someone explain these statements in the Statesman article:
"a major mixed-use project that has become bigger"
"the total square footage remains unchanged"
How are those statements in the same article? Is it bigger or is it the same size?
Yeah, I looked for a website, but couldn't find one. Maybe after Saturday.
I don't know what the Statesman means about the project getting bigger - it sounds like they are just doing more office and retail space and less residential space, which is probably a good thing, because the project was initially very heavy on redidential space. I think the Statesman just likes to incite the no-growthers with hyperbole about big, expensive projects.
On the Hancock NA email yahoo group it says, "They will also unveil the Web site for the development and can probably answer some questions about the plans and timetables." It's weird that it's not live one day before the event, but it looks like they'll have one soon.
The local neighborhoods' complaints about this project were mostly unfounded, but it IS true that there's no GOOD public transportation within walking distance (nor, likely, will there ever be). There's a couple of bus routes, but that's it. Too far to walk to streetcar (which will suck anyways); no light rail (ever); too far to walk to commuter rail (which wouldn't have a station on that part of its line anyways).
I still support it - but people need to lay off the crack that suddenly people will ride the bus because they live in a high-rise. They'll still decide whether or not to ride the bus based on how much slower and how much less reliable it is than their car, and/or how much they have to pay to park whereever they're going.
"The local neighborhoods' complaints about this project were mostly unfounded"
Which complaints were unfounded- the want of through streets in the project so it wasn’t completely separate from the neighborhood, the request the high-rises weren’t build right next to single story homes, the request for some green space, or one of the other “crazy” things that the neighborhood requested before signing off on a huge project that’s being dropped in a largely residential neighborhood?
This project ended up great, but if the developers had their way it would have been a disaster. Thank goodness they needed variances so that the neighborhood had some leverage.
But you are right in saying that people who pay $600,000 won't ride the bus. But I think the hopefully they will walk down the street to a restaurant instead of driving to one.
Hancockguy:
"Although the total square footage remains unchanged at 2.75 million, the current combined office and retail space, 925,000 square feet, has increased from earlier estimates, which varied from 545,000 square feet to 700,000 square feet."
Condos start at $600k, rent in the apartments starts at $1350. Steep, but that's evidently the market.
I wonder what retail options there will be. Restaurants and bars would be nice.
heyzues- shifting around the usage of sq. footage doesn't make a place bigger. I think shilli was right about the Statesman trying to incite negativity. Even if that's not the case it's shoddy journalism/writing. But I wouldn't expect anything else from the Statesman.
$600K seems high for the area (a TX landmark house is 200K less than that one block over), but if it's not then I'm a very happy man today.
Either way, let's hope there's a bar because a nice pub within walking distance is what the neighborhood is missing.
HNAGuy,
The unreasonable demands were from the more reactionary elements of Hancock and Eastwoods, and are not present in the final conversations because they, uh, weren't reasonable enough to be agreed to by the developer or the city. Unless you're not on either email list, you're being very disingenuous in conveniently forgetting the population that simply was against this much density and used transit as a fig-leaf argument.
"But you are right in saying that people who pay $600,000 won't ride the bus. But I think the hopefully they will walk down the street to a restaurant instead of driving to one."
As for that bit, actually, I think the people who self-select for this project will in fact be slightly more likely to be transit-positive than the population as a whole (and, ironically, quite a bit more than the reactionary old guard in both neighborhoods). I just don't think that's enough to make much difference, and therefore, the project shouldn't be crowing about being near transit (but neither should the neighborhoods be moaning about the lack of transit options here - or we can't develop anywhere in the city).
M1EK,
I am on the Hancock e-mail list and many of the Eastwoods e-mails were shared with us. And I've followed this project pretty closely because I live a few blocks away. So feel free to reference anything in those e-mails, which can still be found in their respective yahoo groups, or that was stated by the neighborhood representatives that was "unreasonable".
From what I remember transit didn't come up a whole lot. Sustainability, design standards, neighborhood integration (including maximum height), affordable housing- these are the things that I remember being the sticking points.
Yes, there was a time when the neighborhoods called for what would have been a shutdown of the project (by voting against the height and density variances) but that was after they tried negotiate a compromise with the developer who wasn't willing to budge at the time.
"Yes, there was a time when the neighborhoods called for what would have been a shutdown of the project (by voting against the height and density variances) but that was after they tried negotiate a compromise with the developer who wasn't willing to budge at the time."
That's largely the stuff to which I was referring, but I do not agree with the characterization that the developer "wasn't willing to budge". I would more accurately characterize it as "the city council told the neighbors to negotiate seriously, and told the developer to listen, if they did", with the inherent threat that the original project would be approved if members of (not necessarily leadership of) those neighborhoods continued their intransigence. I'll note that members of at least one list indicated that they felt they were being forced to give those concessions to forestall exactly that eventuality.
This history tells a different story:
www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A460807
And the developer tried to fight the ROMA plan too. And far before that they had the "we're building to 210' or we're not building at all" stance, which I call unwilling to budge.
HNAGuy,
The Chronicle is a lost cause - Gregor et al have become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the ANC.
HNAGuy,
For instance: just observed a moment ago on eastwoods' list:
"This would be laughable if it wasn’t so horrendous."
in response to somebody posting about the neighborhood appreciation party.
M1KE,
It's nice that you can just dismiss others arguments that you don't agree with. I believe I'll do the same.
Also, the party was laughable and limestone is horrendous.
The Web site www.eastave.net is both. $600,000 condos and you can't put some money into a decent Web site?
"t's nice that you can just dismiss others arguments that you don't agree with."
I didn't 'dismiss' it. I brought it up because you basically dared me to find an example of total opposition to even the 'compromise' plan ("unfounded complaints"), and voila, one popped up very conveniently.
Hint: When you basically tell somebody to put up or shut up, and they actually DO put up, you have an obligation to shut up.
M1KE,
So dismissing an entire Chronicle article is "putting up"?
And posting one neighbors opinion on a message board is somehow akin to neighborhood reps in a council debate? That wasn't an unreasonable demand- it was an opinion. I didn't ask you to find opposition to the plan I asked you to find unreasonable demands that were made on behalf of the neighborhood.
So I'm still waiting for you to put up.
"I asked you to find unreasonable demands that were made on behalf of the neighborhood."
The person who made that comment is somebody who has often spoken on behalf of Eastwoods, even though she may have 'lost' this time around. She was one of several, during deliberations, who were pushing the approach I described earlier - i.e., No To Everything.