The Austin City Council approved the development of two over 400-foot-tall towers on West Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, despite University and residential pushback.
The development will include over 300 rental units, 287 hotel units and 61 condo units. The Downtown Density Bonus Program, which allows buildings in the city of Austin to have greater height and density if it provides community benefits, permitted the building’s over 400-feet height. The program also requires the development to either provide on-site affordable housing or pay a bonus fee into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The development plans to pay $3.3 million into the fund.
Despite the proximity to campus, the new development is “not planning student housing at this time,” wrote a representative from Rundog Real Estate Group, the company who plans to build the development, in an email. The representative wrote that students will benefit anyways from “the pocket park, the weekend-activated alley and the retail opportunities this project will bring.”
City Council Member Zohaib “Zo” Qadri, who represents UT and West Campus, said in a statement that the new development will directly benefit UT students.
“The project will create a safer, more walkable, and more welcoming street environment for students traveling on foot or by bike,” Qadri wrote. “Planned alley improvements and active ground-floor uses will enhance visibility and safety, aligning with Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles that are especially important to West Campus stakeholders.”
CPTED is an urban planning tool that helps design a safer community through defining the owner of a space and making it easier to observe all users, including criminals, according to a U.S. Department of Justice handbook.
However, many groups, including UT, raised concerns about the new project. Lobbyist Richard Suttle, who spoke on behalf of UT at the city council meeting, said the University supported postponing discussion of the issue for two weeks so they could examine what “the infrastructure can carry and what this plan will actually mean.”
Residents of Judges Hill, the residential neighborhood next to the proposed development, also voiced concerns about the project at the meeting. Marisela Maddox, president of the Judges Hill Neighborhood Association, said she was most concerned about environmental dangers of the new development.
“It was a dry cleaner site for over 50 years,” Maddox said. “There is a strong indication that it is contaminated, the entire lot is contaminated, not just where the Jack Brown Cleaners was located.”
Maddox said the height of the building is also “not compatible” with what already exists in the Judge’s Hill neighborhood. Maddox said she would be open to the discussion of a different development near the area.
“Bringing in new development is not the problem,” Maddox said. “It can be appealing, and it can bring a sense of community if it’s done appropriately … it’s just the height and the scale is pretty significant.”
