June 25, 2007
Most Austin Neighborhoods Embrace VMU Zoning
Despite the sprawl-loving Statesman's spin attempt, it is clear that the majority of Austin neighborhoods are embracing VMU zoning. Out of eighty neighborhoods given the choice to opt-out, forty-six did nothing, which apparently means the VMU zoning will be implemented as suggested by the city. Seven neighborhoods responded, but did not opt-out for any properties. It isn't clear whether they opted-in for additional properties, or just submitted applications saying that they agreed with the city's recommendations.
Twenty-seven neighborhoods opted-out for some properties, but the primary point of this exercise was to give neighborhoods the chance to opt-out, so that isn't terribly surprising. Some of the individual decisions are disappointing, especially the decision to opt-out for Seventh Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in East Austin. The Allandale Neighborhood Association's decision to opt-out on several lots along Burnet Road and Anderson Lane is also disappointing, especially given RG4N's recent rhetoric, but will be less than surprising to some commenters. The East Riverside/Oltorf Combined Neighborhood Planning Team decided to opt-out, but that appears to be based on the fact that they are currently in the process of a planning study and want to make VMU decisions based on the results of that study.
City Council has the power to override neighborhood's decisions, but that probably isn't necessary, even in places where VMU zoning really should be put in place. As more VMU projects are built around the city, the doubters will come around and neighborhoods will start to demand a second shot at getting VMU zoning. Austin has decades of suburban planning to overcome. It isn't going to be eliminated in one fell swoop and doesn't need to be. Overall, this looks like a big step forward.
For information on whether properties in your neighborhood have been opted-in or out of VMU, click here, scroll down to the map, then click the red square for a detailed map.
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I thank you for the link, but I think you're being way too positive on this. Many neighborhoods said nothing because they are inactive; many others said nothing because there was no impact to them.
The Statesman also didn't cover CANPAC, Hyde Park, and OWANA; who own the "opt" rights to the most important corridors (Lamar close to downtown; Guadalupe north of UT); and all three have been irresponsible in completely opting-out.
As for Allandale, the EC overruled the (modestly reasonable) recommendations of their own VMU committee as what was clearly a spiteful attempt to lash out in response to the Northcross affair...
Finally, as for the "they'll come around later" theory - remember that we're giving implicit endorsement which takes quite a while to overcome. The bad neighborhood plans CANPAC and Hyde Park foisted on us have the patina of approval which buys them quite a bit at the commission and future city council level; and this VMU decision will be no different - it sets the bar that much higher to fix it later.
Also please note the Statesman actually doing the job that the Chronicle used to be counted on doing: cutting through the PR and figuring out who is doing what, and what it means (good job by Sarah Coppola). Very proud of the Statesman for turning around their local coverage; and very sad that the Chronicle has fallen so badly. I don't find them to have unnecessarily boosted sprawl at all; I think that unlike the Chronicle, they've actually bothered to check up on what neighborhoods are really doing and voting for (and as noted, they even left out some of the most egregious offenders, so if anything they UNDERplayed the truculence).
Note Brewster's peeved tone on the neighborhoods failing to hold up their end of the McMansion bargain. But it's not as if everybody and their dog predicted any different. The leadership of the central neighborhoods, especially ANC itself, cannot ever be counted on to be responsible, period.
I'm happy to see the coverage by the Statesman and this article itself wasn't too bad. I think other coverage by the Statesman is generally too pro-highway/pro-spwarl. I had just read Ben Wear's article complaining that a light should be removed because commuters to wait "up to a minute to get going again." The Statesman's actual offices are also some of the most misplaced suburban crap in town. Plus, I thought the link from the Statesman's main page "Plan for denser growth hard to sell" was misleading, but I am clearly more satisfied that many neighborhoods are embracing VMU than you are.
I agree that CANPAC, Hyde Park, and OWANA made bad decisions. Opting out entirely on 5th and 6th West of Lamar (almost everything West of Guadalupe) is ridiculous - that is one area I wouldn't mind seeing City Council override. Same with Guadalupe and Lamar north of the river. That said, I think the fact that many non-central neighborhoods are opting-in on several properties is interesting and encouraging, and I would have liked to see more coverage of that in the article.
There never should have been 'opt in' or 'opt out'. The city should have gone to the neighborhoods, and said, "Where do you want VMU, because if you don't pick...we'll pick where it's at."
shilli,
I think the interesting angle is that the inner ring of old suburbs have been more responsible than expected; but the traditional central Austin neighborhoods have been uniformly IRResponsible. The ANC, dominated by those central neighborhoods (Hyde Park south to Zilker/Bouldin) should not be let off the hook here at all.
Personally, I think that all commercial and multi-family development should be VMU. There may be a few isolated instances where it doesn't make sense, but in urban settings, residential and/or office space above ground floor retail seems better than pure residential, pure office or pure retail buildings. I think that type of development is possible even for properties that have opted out of VMU - developers wouldn't get the added incentives (reduced setbacks, etc.) or have to comply with the additional restrictions (affordability, etc.), but they could still build vertical mixed use projects. It some of the neighborhoods that opted out, the economic situation is probably in place for them to do so even without VMU zoning.
Ironic that East Austin opted out with the excuse that the package doesn't do enough to promote affordable housing - the 10% they get by opting-in strikes me as an improvement over the 0% they get by opting out. Maybe the city could make it 20-30% in those neighborhoods and opt them in.
M1EK, I think that is the right angle, but it wasn't how I read the Statesman article.
Brewster ought to be peeved. When ANC asked Council in February to allow neighborhoods to opt specific properties out of VMU zoning, there were a lot of people -- including Mike Martinez and Betty Dunkerly -- who worried that giving neighborhoods this kind of discretion would gut the VMU ordinance. Brewster gave his word that the amendment would do no such thing. "Trust me," he said.
Now Council will have to stare down some of the cities' most politically powerful neighborhood groups. Brewster's ANC buddies have put him in a real awkward spot.
Shilli,
Agreed with your first sentence if you add "on non-trivial roads". Otherwise, eventually you end up with too much street-level retail even for people like me who would prefer a vast oversupply. (Even in Manhattan, the buildings on the avenues almost all have street-level retail, but many on the interior streets do not, and they have a lot more height to supply those businesses with customers).
Shilli, in Austin you cannot mix residential and office/retail uses without specific permission. If property is zoned "CS," then without a VMU or MU overlay, you cannot put residential on it. That to me was the real virtue of VMU: It opened up tons of commercial property to residential development. Opting a lot out of VMU altogether means "No residential" on that lot.
The VMU package incentives would give developers density bonuses in return for affordability. That is a distinct opt-out decision. If a property is zoned VMU but the neighborhood opts it out of the incentive package then, you're correct, residential can still be built there. Just not as densely (and perhaps not feasibly).
The opt-out decisions that we're hearing about are generally decisions to opt properties completely out of VMU, thus removing them from residential development.
Sprawl loving Statesman? Do you really think that the newspaper has a dog in this fight? Seriously?
Wes,
The observed position of the Statesman is usually that whatever helps sell real estate advertising is good. In the case of VMU, one could certainly argue either way - but if the neighborhoods successfully obstruct it AND many of those same folks also successfully slow down sprawl, the newspaper would certainly lose.
AC, for 5th and 6th or Guadalupe and Lamar - how can you tell whether they have been opted-out of only the incentive package (and therefore can still have less dense mixed-use development) or opted-out of VMU entirely so that mixed-use development would be prohibited? On the city maps, those areas are coded "Vertical Mixed Use Overlay District ("Opt-out")", which leads me to believe they are in the former category. I'm not surprised to see NAs fighting against density, but I don't see why anyone would fight against mixed-use.
Wes, yes, I seriously believe that news outlets in general and the Statesman in particular (and the individuals within) are not entirely unbiased communicators of fact, but often have their own agenda. I don't think the Statesman is worse than, for example, Fox News, but I do think that reporters and editors at the Statesman have opinions and I think those opinions come through in the articles. They may seem unbiased to you because you are more in line with them politically than I am. This is probably true for the majority of their readership - my perception is that the Statesmen pretty accurately reflects the political view of the majority of the people that read it. I'm not sure that is a problem, but it doesn't make them unbiased. I recognize that they wouldn't be less biased if they shifted my way politically. I also recognize that I am not unbiased (in case that wasn't clear).
Shilli,
I can tell you from being an interested observer of OWANA that they were up to recently basically planning on opting out entirely. (I still own property in OWANA).
Shilli, the city maps (at least the ones I've seen) reflect existing VMU status, not the neighborhood opt-in, opt-out decisions. The neighborhood decisions aren't even final until mid-July, at the end of the 45-day extension.
The East Austin neighborhood that is along MLK decided to opt-out all the properties so that we would have time to go to our neighborhood association and tell them about this. We plan on opting-in almost all if not all the properties that are eligible. We just wanted to use our 45 days to look more indepth at this. I suspect that other neighborhoods are using this option as well. In order to make changes you had to go through the neighborhood and have a vote and we just didn;t have time.
I hate VMU, it's ugly, the tenants are rich out-of-towners and the stores at the bottom are usually chain stores that I can find at any local shopping center. Stop trying to force our city to follow the same blueprints as New York, Portland, Chicago, let Austin be Austin.
Stew, you know we really need a Nike Town and a Gap downtown and having a Gap in every neighborhood is cool too. If it were not for VMU and 200 sq. "grocery stores" on the bottom floor, where would people get their $6 gallons of milk and $4 bananas?
I'd much rather live in Portland, Chicago, or New York than San Antonio or Houston.
As for those folks who just want Austin to stay the Austin it was in the 70's, you should really check out Marfa. The bus leaves at 10:50 every day.
I've reviewed the city's maps many times and remain confused. Unless the Bouldin Creek Planning committee pulled a bait and switch, my neighborhood opted in all the properties fronting Barton Springs, S 1st and S. Congress. That's not clear from any of the maps.
The amount of confusion around this ordinance is amazing. The Statesman article was ok, but still a little off.
(A) The opt-in/opt-out process was to add or remove buildings from the VMU Overlay District. In the VMU-OD, all commercial buildings would automatically be given a VMU zoning overlay, enabling VMU development on those properties. Even after the neighborhood recommendations are final and the city has their say, any commercial buildings not in the VMU Overlay District could latter have a VMU overlay applied to them via the normal zoning change process. So, just since a building isn't added to the VMU-OD now doesn't mean it can't be developed as VMU later. But it'll probably be the developers asking for the VMU overlay for a property, not the neighborhood associations. One reason to opt properties out of the VMU-OD was to force developers to start a conversation with neighborhoods (through the zoning change process) before starting a VMU development.
(B) When you look at the details for the "affordable housing" figures in the VMU ordinance they're pathetic. "Affordable" for a family at 80% of Austin's Mean Family Income (MFI) is still higher than average rents in town. Even at the low end of the scale (60% of MFI) you're talking about rents affordable by the middle-class, not the person bagging your goods at the local supermarket. If East Austin's interested in really affordable housing, they're right to choke on the VMU figures.
(C) The actions of the Allendale Neighborhood Association look even more childish when compared to the Rosedale Neighborhood Association, which supported VMU all along their stretches of Lamar and Burnet. I know newspaper space is limited, but not all of the Central neighborhoods said no to VMU.
"One reason to opt properties out of the VMU-OD was to force developers to start a conversation with neighborhoods (through the zoning change process) before starting a VMU development."
The VMU ordinance was supposed to dispense with this kind of "conversation." The ordinance was a bargain: the city agreed to open up lots of territory to residential development, the developers agreed to strict design guidelines. The guidelines were intended to ensure good design and to protect the neighborhood interiors. The blanket overlay was supposed to eliminate the constant bickering over scale and design -- i.e., to eliminate these expensive "conversations."