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Cooper, Robertson presented two proposals today for the future development of the Brackenridge Tract.
The most controversial point is that both plans include the elimination of Lions Municipal Golf Course. The main difference between the plans is that one also eliminates the Field Lab, while the other merely shrinks it. Both plans keep the West Austin Youth Association, although one plan moves it slightly southward.
Both plans are well-considered, phased, integrated proposals with a solid street grid. About 25% of the tract, including the entire frontage of Lady Bird Lake and most of the frontage of Schulle Branch Creek (which is now mainly a drainage ditch) would become public parkland. The development would be primarily residential, but would have substantial amounts of integrated office and ground-floor retail space.
The plans would start with the redevelopment of the Gateway Apartments in Clarksville to incorporate the housing currently located at the Colorado and Brackenridge apartments, which would then be demolished (around 2012). Those areas would be developed first, and the UT Regents would make a second decision whether to develop Lions and/or the Field Lab in 2019 when the Lions lease expires.
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Both are great. Austin will be lucky to either one.
I played that so many times back in the day. MoWilly's been my backyard course for over a decade now though I'm sure it's fate will be the same eventually. I guess the belief is that if you can still afford to in the area then you should be playing one of the Barton Creek courses or ACC, or at the very least have a neighbor who's a golf member.
To all of the developers in the central texas area, especially those who want do away with Muny: There is a special place in hell for you. Thanks for taking the soul out of Austin.
I like having the golf course there, but I think the city got a great deal on the lease and I have a hard time seeing the city being willing to re-lease it in 2019 at a rate comparable to what UT could get by developing the land. Given that, the choice for UT is re-lease it as a golf course at a rate that is effectively a wealth transfer from UT to the city, or develop it.
That said, I don't understand how this plan would be implemented. Is all the residential space going to be rentals? I thought they didn't want to sell it (in line with the initial bequest). It is hard for me to envision all of this being rental space as the most economically beneficial use of the land.
UT has, to a certain degree, also an obligation to the city of Austin as well as to itself in getting some monetary value from the property. The city will financially benefit from the property and sales revenue taxes when the property is converted to the plan. In all i think the plan does a good job of fairly representing the interests of UT, the neighborhood and the City of Austin. But to echo Scooby's remarks about the locals ponying up the cash to buy MUNY; to some degree I resent the protestors, many of them neighborhood residents, because they would be the first to tell No Development types that Property Owner rights trump all.
This is UT land. UT did not come up with the plans for a housing development, and this clearly is NOT in UT's best interest. Everyone at UT who has stated a opinion publicly has been opposed to these proposals from New York developers. These proposals would seriously hurt UT's existing academic programs, and would constrain UT's future plans for new academic programs. The income from a housing development would be minor compared to what academic programs bring to the university, in both grant money and tuition revenue. More to the point, UT is mostly short on SPACE. Putting a housing development on top of the field lab makes as much sense as selling off Main to build a shopping mall. And tying up UT's only space for campus expansion with a housing development would be amazingly short-sighted. Once a housing development is built, it would be politically impossible to ever re-develop it for academic purposes, no matter who owns the land. But this is not UT's proposal...it is a New York developer's proposal. Now we need to see what UT proposes to do with it's land. Brack Tract does not belong to Cooper-Robertson, and they clearly did not have UT's interests in mind when they made these proposals.