October 19, 2007
Mixed Use Comes to North Burnet
On Thursday night, City Council preliminarily approved the first phase of a plan to create a ‘second downtown’ in the area around the Domain. The North Burnet/Gateway Master Plan aims to transform 2,330 acres north of US 183 into a pedestrian and public transportation friendly mixed-use neighborhood.
The plan envisions a redesigned Burnet Road as a ‘multi-use transit boulevard carrying Austin, bicycle and future transit service throughout the area.’ It will encourage the addition of retail and housing in the area with zoning changes that allow for greater densities and development incentives. The affected area is be three times the size of the Mueller redevelopment and will accommodate a “significant number of new residents,” according to the plan.
Photo from the North Burnet/Gateway Master Plan.
Molly Scarbrough of the Watershed Planning and Review Department says that the master plan started out as a traditional neighborhood plan, but city staff soon realized there was a unique opportunity to revitalize the primarily commercial and industrial area given planned light rail in the area and the current lack of housing.
Cater & Burgess, Inc., the lead consultant on the plan, has been collaborating since April 2006 with other engineering and design firms, the city, and the public, who were given considerable input in the planning process. Area stakeholders were part of a one-week design charrette, and also represented throughout the process on the plan’s Public Advisory Group.
The plan was modeled after the University Neighborhood Plan, says Scarbrough, and is expected to receive final approval from city council on Nov. 1, 2007.
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Commuter rail, not light rail, is planned for the area.
WILL THEY HAVE A BURGER KING AND DUMPSTERS FOR THE HOMELESS?
Thanks, Jonathan.
Worth noting that TOD has never succeeded around anything but high-frequency high-quality rail transit (i.e. if the rail ran right by the apartments, and right into downtown instead of requiring shuttle buses on both ends, it could be called TOD, but anything around buses most definitely is NOT TOD).
The Domain looks like Disney World mated with parts of Dallas. No thanks.
I like the idea of mixed use, but Austin's application of it seems to be somewhat faceless and bland.
I agree. Rather than spending our time fighting to keep developers from building (which if anyone is keeping track is looking like the biggest time waster going) we should be fighting to get interesting architecture. With all the condo developments going in we still don't have anything that looks as nice as the Frost Bank building. (And the Frost Bank building is still not as interesting as I'd like, just 1000 times better than the rest of downtown buildings). We should fight for better design.
I awoke one morning alone in an unfamiliar room with a terrible hangover. The phone rang. I picked it up and a strange voice told me that I was number six and that I should go to the green dome.
It took me months to escape the Domain.
I am not a number. I am a free man!
I'd say the majority of the stuff actually getting built everywhere in the country is pretty faceless and bland. Some interesting stuff gets publicity, but most of it looks like the above. It is tough to regulate design, and when you do I think you get more bland, not more interesting. I think some of the planned condos downtown will be at least as nice as Frost Bank (some are hideous and the ones going up now are boring, except that I kind of like AMLI II).
I also agree that Domain I is a freaky Dallas/Disneyland thing, but I still like it more than any other greenfield project nearby.
I'm not sure what the actual plan is for Domain II regarding development, but it is incredibly hard to build an area like this all at once and make it interesting. If they split up the lots among a lot of different developers we might end up getting some interesting architecture included. My understanding is that the renderings (and the plan as it exists now) are intended more to show the form of the space than the actual building designs.
I agree that the designs (as shown) aren't that interesting, but I think the form is very interesting. We don't have anywhere in Austin with a substantial area consisting of mid-rise blocks of residential and office space over retail space. To me, that is the optimal form to create a livable, walkable area that is capable of supporting transit. I think demand is sufficient that a pleasant, walkable project (like this could be) will be successful regardless of whether it is sufficiently served by transit. If it is successful, I think it will create more demand for high-frequency high-quality rail transit.
TOD requires people invest more than typical for less space than typical (especially for their car) on the assumption that they're getting really good transit service.
That's not going to happen in this case, obviously.
As for "high-quality high-frequency rail transit will come later", we've stuck commuter rail on the only feasible light rail corridor in the city. There's no way to polish that particular turd into a diamond. Shilli, you of all people, ought to know this.
Yeah, I'm not really thinking of this as TOD, although I understand that it is being marketed that way (and we have it in the "TOD" category). I'm just thinking of it as a nice, dense development. I don't think the success of this development is dependent on people paying more for it based on the transit options.
One rail line is not going to be a workable rail system, whether it is light rail, commuter rail, streetcar or whatever. It might work for a few people, but you need a network of multiple lines to be a workable system for a large group of people. I personally think that someday we are going to start converting roads into dedicated rail corridors. It may not happen anytime soon, but I think eventually it will, and I think that developments like this are the type that will bring that about sooner.
You can convert roads into dedicated rail corridors in industrial areas, but nowhere else - and it's not going to happen without a radical turnover in the federal government (and even then, other cities with better plans will get the money we could have had).
And, yes, one line can and does work - it worked in Portland, it worked in Dallas, it worked in Minneapolis, heck, it even worked in Houston (which is the only one that didn't use a significant portion of off-street ROW - the exception I'd figure you'd bring up).
"Nice, dense development" here which isn't dense enough to strangle on its own automobile traffic is also not much past the level of supporting merely decent bus service. That's the chicken-and-egg problem that tools like Duany just ignore - you can never get to rail-feasible levels of density without the rail to begin with, because people will stop moving in when the drive gets really bad (no, stereotypical naive listener, the bus never helps - when traffic gets really bad, the car's advantage over the bus actually gets larger, not smaller).
One rail line can work in that it can be popular and allow people living and working along it to use it instead of driving, but one rail line is not going to be a workable system because it will not have a significant impact on the number of people city-wide who drive themselves to work, because most people will not live and work close enough to that line.
Also, to me, a big part of the point of mixed-use development is to eliminate the need to commute, so that people can and will walk or bike to work instead of driving (or taking a train or bus). I think living 30 (or 50 or 100) miles from where you work is decadent and wasteful, and I'm not interested in trying to facilitate that. Obviously there will be individual exceptions that need that luxury, but I think it is a big problem that the majority of people in our society spend so much time, money and energy moving in circles.
Most mixed-use development doesn't result in people working in the same building they live in. The work-commute reduction is minimal compared to the shopping-drive reduction.
People living at the Domain will likely work all over the region, and people working at the Domain will come from all over the region. And there's no foreseeable future in which they'll be able to do that commute on rail, not even on one rail line.
2000's LRT was so great not because it went to where everybody lived, but because it went to the three greatest concentrations of employment - meaning that people from a wide area (a good chunk but by no means all of the living area) could take it to work in a corridor where there will never be any additional investments in roadway lanes (you heard me; I'm predicting no more lanes on I-35, and certainly none on Lamar/Guadalupe).
If you try to build a system out of pieces which don't work, you just end up with a really shitty system which doesn't work. The commuter rail line doesn't work; and never can (can't be extended anywhere worth going and people will not transfer to shuttlebuses or even streetcars on a daily basis if they can choose to drive).
And the only piece which might have worked was precluded by commuter rail (needs some of the same land). We don't have the power or the money to get a completely in-street line like Houston's done, not that it would work here anyways (we don't have a huge stadium-sized park-and-ride we could run it to on one end - we need to run all the way out to the suburban park-and-rides to make it work, which again is where commuter rail really screwed us).
You keep falling back into naive optimism - which is fine, but don't pretend that it's what other cities have done - nobody has ever built a good system out of shitty parts; and plenty of cities have started out with a good part and then built a system around it.