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 ->......

The Statesman headline is "Hutto project to rival Southpark Meadows in size: Mixed use development in works on nearly 500 acres." It sounds like another greenfield lost to development caused by the toll roads and another strip mall + suburb using New Urbanist language to market suburban crap. The first concern is true - SH130 runs through the plot formerly know as the "Hutto 400" (now re-branded the "Crossings of Carmel Creek") and has made......

With all the hype surrounding high-rise condos and New Urbanism, it is easy to forget that the dominant form of growth in Austin is still 20th century style, car-centric, suburban sprawl. Small developments (like The Shops at Silverado, shown right) or large (like the 425-acre Southpark Meadows, shown above), most new construction in Austin comes in the form of sparse, single-use, single-story sprawl. Southpark Meadows co-opts the language of New Urbanism as a marketing......

So much urban development is happening in Austin, we barely have time to hit the highlights. We'd love to offer more fulsome coverage, but we need help. If you are interested in writing urban development posts for Austinist.com, email urban(@)austinist.com (remove the parenthesis) with a few sample posts and some information about yourself and why you want to write for Austinist.com. Villa Muse Development: Villa Muse (shown right) is a proposed 681-acre mixed-used development......

Katherine Gregor does a nice job in this week's Developing Stories chronicling the negotiations surrounding the redevelopment of the former location of Concordia University. The setup is a familiar one - developers propose crappy project, neighbors get upset and protest. Here's the twist: the New Urbanist gurus at ROMA step in to mediate and they work out a project that everyone is happy with (at least the developers and the heads of the neighborhood......