A few shots of Mueller

Some photos below the jump.

It's still not too much to look at.  But it's progress.

Here is the builders' lot map if you want to orient yourself.

The view south from the ridge along Lake Park.

Looking down McCloskey Street.  This is the only street so far with construction on both sides. 

The south side of McCloskey.

A couple David Weekley yard homes on McCloskey.

The alley between McCloskey and Emma Long.  All of the alleys are one way.  Big mistake, in my opinion.  One-way traffic will just encourage cars to go faster.  Plus, it would get on my nerves to have to drive around the block to get to the alley entrance.  My suggestion:  Experiment.  There are lots of alleys.  Make a couple of them two way for one year and let the adjoining homeowners vote on whether to keep them two way.

The intersection of McCloskey and Comacho from (I think) the western edge of the neighborhood park. (For you out-of-towners, that is the University of Texas clock tower in the distance.)

Comacho Street.

The alley running from Zach Scott to Antone.

Homes being framed on Littlefield.

They're planting trees at Lake Park.

They need more.

A long way to go.

Comments

[dwntown]

Let me correct my math- the 3700 sq foot home has an attached two car garage of at least 400 sq feet- my apologies on the confustion. The FAR is the same - .78

[RobTheRealtor]

In reading this conversation about McMansions...a word I've used a few times in my business as a real estate agent...I think the term didn't come from specific numbers (i.e.percent of impervious cover, max square footage etc) but came from the idea that if you wanted more square footage in an older part of an inner city that has very small lot sizes, you would tear down and rebuild or add-on to the existing structure. Many times with a house that filled up the lot to it's building lines or very close. And since square footage is the main goal, there would be nor room for interesting architectural features and would essentially be a large box. If all the original houses in the area were 1000 to 1500sqft and selling at $250 per square foot, building a 4000 square foot home gave you instant value and a "Mansion" among all the other houses. For example 1500 sqft at $250 per sqft would be $375k but a 4000sqft house at $250 per sqft would be $1 million. I've seen this in Travis heights. The main complaint (and I have seen this as well) is those folks that have lived in these neighborhoods for years are being trapped in by giant 2 or 3 story boxes that block sunlight and crowd you in. Hope this makes sense...it's absurd....go to Pflugerville right? So the McMansion laws essentially regulate how much of your lot you can build on (and then how far you can build upwards by regulating stories and square footage) to protect your neighbors from being trapped in.

[AC]

Whatever its colloquial definition, "McMansion" now means whatever has been outlawed by ordinance. What the ordinance forbids is nowhere close to the examples you give.

The minimum guaranteed house is a 2300 sq ft house where tall ceilings, second floor balconies, and all but the first 200 sq ft of attached garages count double. A 6,000 lot will now hold just a 2200 sq ft house, if the homeowners are greedy enough to want a 2-car garage. (You can kiss second-story balconies and garage apartments goodbye). Under no colloquial definion is a 2200 sq ft house a McMansion, particularly when the neighborhood is dotted with similar-FAR homes.

I recently did an analysis, which I guess I'll post sometime, showing that the average FAR of 2003 and later construction was fairly highly correlated with the upper range of neighborhood FARs pre-2003, before the tear down phenomenon began. There was absolutely no correlation between average neighborhod lot size and the FAR of 2003+ construction. In other words, the new construction was proceeding according to a certain logic: high FAR homes tended to be built in neighborhoods where high FAR homes were more common. People notice, remember, and (in my opinion) give undue weight to the outliers.

Your numerical example, by the way, illustrates the economic harm inflicted on small lot owners. Using average construction costs of $150 per sq ft, and assuming $250/sq ft sales price, lowering the maximum buildable area on a lot from 3000 sq ft to 2200 sq ft homes cost the small lot owner $60,000 in equity, and that's even allowing for demolition costs. Large lot owners were the relative beneficiaries. Not real equitable, in my opinion.

I've written ad nauseum about the McMansion ordinance and won't rehash all of it, but even if mismatched houses really bother you, there's no reason the ordinance wasn't tailored to the FAR characteristics of individual neighborhoods.

[M1EK]

Rob,

The problem with "feeling trapped" kind of subjective reasoning is that it falls apart when you look at the homes of the people who pushed so hard for McMansion, as I learned in my neck of the woods with Karen McGraw (has a garage apartment and a total of 3600 square feet on a corner lot surrounded by tiny bungalows) and Mary Gay Maxwell (moderately sized 2-story house, but is setback much farther on the front than her neighbors, so it unquestionably "towers over the backyards of its neighbors").

These people should not have been allowed to do what they did - as Chris says, it was an equity-grab from small lots to large lots - in other words, regressive economic policy.

[DSK]

"since square footage is the main goal, there would be no room for interesting architectural features and would essentially be a large box"

Wrong. There is no reason this need be true. Try checking out some large cities some time.