South Lamar's spontaneous redevelopment

When I moved to South Lamar in 2001, South Lamar was teetering between "scruffy" and "seedy."  Yes, it had its share of icons, with the Broken Spoke, Saxon Pub, and Taco Xpress.  But it had more than its share of porn shops, "lingerie modeling" studios, and run-down laundromats.  It seemed to have everyone's share of used car lots and auto repair shops.  Almost every block had at least one failing business.

Over the last few years, South Lamar has seen a slow but steady rejuvenation.  It has happened one building at a time.  The turn started three or four years ago, when a long, low-slung porn shop just south of Oltorf was remodeled and carved up into a row of brightly-colored shops.  The street instantly lost one of its more menacing facades.  A few blocks north, a studio that had openly advertised "live lingerie modeling" was converted to (what I assume is) a legitimate clothing store. Nearby, a vacant building that had housed a Tuscan art studio was rehabbed into seven spanking new shops, including a barber shop, beads store, and lingerie shop.  To keep up with its neighbor, the 1960s-era strip center next door had to get a face lift.  Small, new office buildings have sprung up just off South Lamar on Collier. Citibank has opened a new branch. 

Some of the recent progress has been more dramatic.  Alamo Drafthouse opened in Lamar Plaza.  The trailer park at South Lamar and Bluebonnet was replaced by a 24-hour Walgreen's and an office/condo mixed-use project (under construction).  Lamar Plaza and Bluebonnet, once gloomy and slightly intimidating at night, are now two of the liveliest spots on South Lamar at night.

South Lamar's rehabilitation is by no means complete.  Even more dramatic changes are in the works.  At least three condo projects are about to break ground:  the Magnolia (across from Lamar Plaza), the Sage (just south of Collier), and the View (just north of Panther Trail).  There are (controversial) plans to replace the low-density Stoneridge apartments with a 300-unit vertical mixed-use complex.   Just last week, a developer filed a petition to rezone a large tract between South Lamar and Manchaca for vertical mixed use.

So South Lamar is losing its scruffiness.  Still, it has a long way to go to become a lively urban street.  For starters, it has way too many used car lots and auto repair shops.  I counted 39 yesterday, or roughly 13 per mile.  Second, there is still very little foot traffic on South Lamar, except around the bus stops.  This is partly the fault of used car lots; they are death for street life.  But it's not just the lack of pedestrians.  There is little cohesion between the east and west sides of the street.  For too much of the day, South Lamar feels like an expressway rather than a major urban artery.

I'd like to see South Lamar complete its evolution into an energetic, urban street.  It has all of the ingredients for a successful street.  It has a healthy base of businesses, with vets offices, a nursery, clothing stores, antique shops, a flooring supply store, yoga, gyms, offices, restaurants, a Half-Price Books, day-care, dry cleaners, toy stores, and computer repair shops.  It's got funky businesses.  It's got lots of old buildings to incubate funky new businesses.  It's got a decent concentration of residential (and more coming).  It's got lots of through traffic and a good location.  I don't think its evolution is guaranteed, though.  A street's development has a life of its own, and you can't necessarily predict its outcome from past events.

The city should do its part to encourage South Lamar's revitalization.  There's no need for massive subsidies or elaborate planning.  (After all, the revitalization so far has taken place without any public investment or planning.)  But there are two things the city can do to foster spontaneous, organic redevelopment:

1. Don't interfere!

Really.  Get out of the way.  Do not succumb to the temptation to micromanage.  Don't try to force one block to replicate a formula that was successful on another block.  Don't create incentives for a specific use.  Don't create disincentives for a specific use.  Just let it happen.

This is harder than it sounds because micromanagement is written into the zoning map. I was screwing around with the city's GIS viewer the other day and came across the zoning map for the area around South Lamar and Bluebonnet.  It's a byzantine patchwork of zoning districts:

I tried to outline the various zoning districts in contrasting colors, but I had trouble coming up with enough colors.  This 1,000' X 1,000' square has eleven different zoning categories:  SF-3, CS, CS-1, MF-2, LO, LO-MU, NO, GR, GO, LR, and LR-MU.  There are nine different flavors of commercial zoning. 

I'm not sure what this is supposed to be.  It is not zoning.  As best I can tell, this is simply a pointless codification of the existing land uses. 

Although pointless, it is not harmless.  This rigidity has a cost.  As South Lamar continues to bubble, property owners and entrepreneurs will come up with new uses for these properties.  Some will conflict with the city's tight little script.  For example, someone may want to open a restaurant in an LO district, or a computer repair shop in a GO district, or (gasp!) a liquor store in a CS district (rather than in a CS-1 district, as God intended).  Do everyone a favor.  Let them.  Don't micromanage.  Don't force people to run up thousands of dollars in legal fees just to put a piece of property to its most logical use.   

2.  Add stoplights.

38,000 cars a day use South Lamar.  It is a wide, busy street.  There is no way to cross it safely on foot except at a traffic light.  From the pedestrian's vantage, a "block" of South Lamar consists of the stretch of road between traffic lights, regardless of where the curb cuts actually are.

South Lamar's blocks are much too long for pedestrian use.  There are only eight stoplights between Barton Springs Road and Brodie Oaks Shopping Center, a distance of about three miles.  That is more than a third of a mile, on average, between traffic lights.  There is no light at all from Oltorf to Bluebonnet, a distance of 4/10ths of a mile.  At places, South Lamar looks more like a parkway than a truly urban street.

Suppose you're a pedestrian standing in the middle of one of these super-blocks.  If you want to cross the street, you've got just one safe option:  you can walk all the way to the nearest light, wait two minutes for the light to change, and walk all the way back down the street.  That's a third of a mile -- and at least ten minutes -- just to cross the street. 

Predictably, most people won't walk a third of a mile out of their way to cross the street.  So they don't cross the street unless they really have to.  As a result, there is little circulation of traffic from one side of South Lamar to the other, except at the traffic lights.  Rather than uniting the two street facades, South Lamar functions as a barrier dividing them.

Redevelopment on one side of a street ought to stimulate redevelopment on the other side of the street.  There should be a synergy between them. But you don't see this on South Lamar.  Opposing sides of the street redevelop independently.  For example, the renovation of the old Tuscan art studio triggered the strip-center next door to get a face lift.  That side of the block has now been completely revitalized.  But the opposite side of the street looks just like it did in 2001, and there's no sign it will change any time soon.  If pedestrians could freely circulate between one side of the street and the other, the rejuvenation of one business could trigger redevelopment across the street, rather than just next door.

The city needs to bring South Lamar down to pedestrian scale.  Double the number of traffic lights.  Cut those unfriendly super-blocks in half.  If it is convenient for pedestrians to cross the street, someone may eventually give them a reason to cross the street.   

Comments

[JMVC]

Well done - jmvc

[msanford]

I love this post, great job!

[ccosart]

Totally agree about the pedestrian facilities. Same goes for South Congress. The Soco business owners, not content with killing light rail, also killed the South Congress Improvement Project, which would have upgraded pedestrian facilities on the street...

[M1EK]

#1: If you ever want urban development organically (i.e. on small lots, not in huge chunks), you need to remove setback restrctions and parking requirements. (Some, maybe even most, of those businesses would still provide parking, but not as much - as seen in other cities).

#2: City traffic engineers are very very conservative when it comes to the 'warrants' that justify traffic lights. IE, they're not willing to use their discretion very often - and the warrants for pedestrian traffic are impossible to meet (supposedly high enough that the only spot in the city that meets them is the ped crossing in front of UT).

Alternate strategies basically involve hoping there's a couple of big accidents; getting a bunch of car drivers to promise to use those streets to turn left on to Lamar; or just banging on City Council for a decade or so.

IE: Good luck.

[Prentiss Riddle]

Sorry, but when I read your second paragraph I couldn't help but think of the proposal to buy the old Cinema West building and turn it back into a pr0n theater, in the name of historic preservation... :-)

[AC]

I hadn't heard that. Well, I'm sure the neighborhoods will demand that it be upscale . . .

Check out http://austinzoning.typepad.com/austincontrarian/2007/02/i_wonder_if_lin.html -- something like this has happened in SF's Mission District.

[Chop Chop]

I guess I sort of agree with some of your suggestions, but I have to take issue with your basic viewpoint. Are you saying that the city should somehow plan so that the gentrification of South Lamar continues?

Your improvements for South Lamar included the loss of "porn shops, 'lingerie modeling' studios, and run-down laundromats." Are you suggesting that the city would be better off with fewer laundromats? It doesn't seem like any of the policies you've put forward actually do anything to reduce the number of porn shops in the city.

Creating policies that get used car lots, porn shops and run down laundromats out of your neighborhood sounds like gentrification and NIMBYism not urban planning.

[AC]

You're right about one thing -- I'm not advocating urban _planning_. Hence the word "spontaneous" in the title of the post.

The two "policies" I have advocated are: (1) let people build what they want on South Lamar; and (2) make it easier to cross the street. That's not NIMBYism.

It's true I think new development will add stuff I like and subtract stuff I don't like (or am indifferent to). But I'm willing to let market demand dictate development. NIMBYists use political power or government regulation to keep stuff out, particularly development -- such as dense housing -- that produces net benefits for the community. By definition, they oppose market development; if no one wanted to build it, they wouldn't have to organize to oppose it.

"Gentrification" used to refer to the displacement of low income people from established neighborhoods by rising property values. Apparently, it now means the replacement of anything anywhere by a more valuable use. If that's what gentrification now means then, yes, I'm for it. That's what rising property values are supposed to do.

[Chop Chop]

AC,
I like your blog. I read it regularly and I thing in general you have thoughtful insight to Austin's planning issues.

In general, I agree with you that Austin zoning and development regulations seem more about the codification of existing use and prevailing trends than thoughtful planning. From set back requirements to the new commercial design standards, I think that the number and complexity of Austin's regulations make it more likely that Starbucks can succeed than Local Joe's Hot Jo.

I simply disagree with the way you've stated your position in this entry. Your only definition of progress seems to be the natural effects of gentrification. (I wasn't claiming the the removal of laundromats qualified as gentrification. But as a neighborhood gentrifies - and South Lamar has certainly done so over the last ten years- the market for laundromats decreases and the market for beads increases.)

I also disagree that you don't offer any policies. Your policies may be significantly less complex than current policy, but it is policy nonetheless.

I hope that you aren't going to argue that "laissez-faire" development code is somehow more "natural". All property rights are granted, enforced and controlled by the state. You are advocating a certain policy that has recently pushed laundromats out of your neighborhood. Unless you can show me that having fewer laundromats is a net benefit to society, then I will argue that your only real policy is NIMBY.

I think there are real benefits to simple development regulation. I think you have argued them well in other posts, just not here.

[M1EK]

The policy he advocated is NOT what pushed laundromats out. Under what I presume he'd prefer, we'd be drastically expanding the set of places where laundromats would be allowed.

[AC]

Chop Chop, I think what bugs you about the post is that I appear to be celebrating gentrification.

I think you're making a false assumption, though. You are assuming that the redevelopment is making South Lamar less useful for lower income residents and more useful for higher income residents. South Lamar has never primarily served area residents of any income level, though. You've seized on the laundromats, but the two most common uses on the street are used car lots and car repair shops. These aren't there to serve area residents. South Lamar developed into the city's repository for car-related services, in the process squelching any chance it had of becoming a pedestrian-oriented street. That is now, slowly, beginning to change. This change does not necessarily make the poorer residents worse off. If you take a hard look at the street, you'll see that it offers few services at all for poorer residents.

You could ask, "Why are you supporting policies that will displace the used-car and car-repair trades elsewhere?"

Used car lots and car repair shops perform valuable services. They have to exist somewhere. It may be that South Lamar is the best place for them. (There is probably some benefit to locating a used car lot near a bunch of other used car lots.) I don't have any way of plugging a bunch of information into a computer to determine the optimal location for used car lots, though. Neither do you, and neither does city planning staff. No one has that information.

I suspect that used car lots are no longer the most valuable use of land on South Lamar. They are a low-density use, and people are willing to pay a lot to use the land more intensively -- as a vertical mixed use development, for example. The only way to tell for sure, though, is to see who's willing to pay more. I think that is a much better system than looking at a city-wide map and saying, "We need used car lots here and restaurants here and plant nurseries here."

Moreover, my system makes a city more adaptable. Car lots might be the best use for a city street for a while. Then the city changes and some other use becomes better suited for an area. Price tells you that right away; the rigid land-use controls we have prevent us from figuring that out for a long time, and then make it much harder to adapt.

[Chop Chop]

I don't have to focus on laundromats. If you would rather I focus on used car lots, I can. In general, used car lots are a more permisive zoning. You can open up botique clothing store anywhere you can open up a used car lot, but not the other way around. The used car lots are probably on land that is zoned for 60 feet. That's 4/5 stories and 2.0 FAR. Used car lots are on land that is nowhere near it's zoned development potential.

You can argue that South Lamar has more than it's share of used car lots because of development restrictions on Exposition.

On the other hand, your asking for city infrastructure to improve pedestrian infrastructure (build crosswalks and all the botiques will come) sounds like asking for the government to subsidize gentrification.

[AC]

"Subsidize"? Since the city doesn't charge anyone a user fee for roads, sidewalks, or traffic lights, everyone who benefits from them is getting a subsidy -- including the car lots on South Lamar. Calling something a subsidy doesn't really mean anything.

The city has to decide how to spend its infrastructure money somehow. How about spending it where it believes there will be demand? South Lamar is transforming from a low-density suburban-style arterial into a more urban street without any help from the city. The redevelopment taking place now is evidence that there is pent up demand for a more pedestrian environment. The city should put in new infrastructure where it thinks it will be used.

That might stimulate even more demand for pedestrian uses (I personally hope so), making it even more attractive for shops, VMU, etc., and in turn making it relatively less hospitable for used car lots. But that's only because the used car lot properties are then even more valuable. If the city can create extra value that exceeds the cost of the infrastructure, it has made a good investment.

[DSK]

Pedestrian infrastructure is gentrification?!
Add this to the list of "things that make you throw up your hands".

For the record we have, thus far:

Mueller rowhouses are "McMansions"
6th and Lamar is a "Traffic Nightmare"
Funding sidewalks and other pedestrian infrastructure is "Gentrification"

[Chop Chop]

AC,

"If the city can create extra value that exceeds the cost of the infrastructure, it has made a good investment."

Getting a return for your dollars may be a good investment.

Creating "value" with tax dollars is corporate welfare.

You have yet to prove your case that flipping a "Fiesta" Grocery Store into Alamo Drafthouse provides a net benefit to society.

DSK,
No one is claiming that "Funding sidewalks ... is Gentrification"

The city should decide where to put sidewalks based on where people walk.

But this post is arguing that "if it is convenient for pedestrians to cross the street, someone may eventually give them a reason to cross the street."

Build it, and they will come (to a bead shop, and 24 hour chain drug store).

Sorry if I demand more in trade for my tax dollars.

[AC]

Yes, it's better to destroy value with our tax dollars.

I miss the Fiesta, btw. Our only options now are Sun Harvest (good, but limited offerings) & Oltorf HEB (madhouse).

Remind me again why I have to show that alamo is more valuable than fiesta?

[AC]

And, chop chop, why don't you pony up something here: What are your criteria for spending money on new public infrastructure?

[DSK]

Chop chop, color me unconvinced by your rebuttal. First off, I note the interesting use of elipses. Your argument becomes no more reasonable to me when you try to say "well, sidewalks are OK (everyone loves those, right?), but no OTHER pedestrian amenities." Sorry if I'm mischaracterizing your position, but that is what it sounds like you are saying to me now.

Fundamentally you are mixing up city planning, zoning and market effects. I don't want to end up regurgitating everything AC has already said (and better than I). But if you've got a problem with what shows up (via zoning + market forces) when a street is made safer for pedestrians, the place for deal with that is zoning. Opposing pedestrian improvements is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[Paul Mullen]

Yes, things have been changing on South Lamar. Greedy landlords have pushed up rents - look at the vacant shops around the Horseshoe lounge. On the 2100 block at the corner of Kinney (whose face-lift you commented about)all the previous tenants have left. The laundromat there has gone, to be replaced shortly by a sex-toy and lingerie shop (at least they have no plans to offer live models).

OK, given the price of houses in the area, a move upmarket is no surprise. So far though I haven't noticed much reduction in car lots. Perhaps this is because many new condo developments which had not broken ground, have been put on hold until the financial climate improves.

[AC]

Few of the car lots are zoned for residential or mixed use (yet).

I've assumed the car lots are simply a way to warehouse land, but they are holding on tenaciously. I'm not privy to their books; maybe they generate more cash flow than I thought . . .

Liberty Tax Service has been in the 2100 Kinney building for a long time. The tattoo parlor's been there a while, too. Enterpreneurs evidently believe that corner is a prime location for lingerie/sex-toy shops. Almost as soon as Madame Natasha's closed in the Bird's Barber Shop building, this one popped up. There must be large customer base on that side of S. Lamar.