CNU looks at Austin's downtown

Blogging hiatus is over.  (Please don't e-mail me to tell me you hadn't noticed a hiatus.)  Sometimes my volunteer legal work gets in the way of my paid blogging . . .

The Congress for New Urbanism held its annual convention in Austin last week.  As is usually the case when something cool is going on -- SXSW, the Austin Film Festival, Jaws at the Paramount -- I was frightfully busy at work, so I only made it to a couple of the Saturday sessions. 

Each time slot had several concurrent sessions with enticing titles.  I picked "Tall Towers:  Purposeful Density or Loose Tower Disease?"  The program guide offered this teaser:

Is the current movement of returning downtown to live in towers promoting livable cities, or are such towers a blight on urbanism? Who is right? Hear and ponder three points of view: No tall buildings; managed districts based on specific criteria, i.e., viewsheds, etc.; and the more density the better.

I took my seat in the meeting room right before the talk began, and, shrewd fellow that I am, noticed right away that there were only two speakers at the table.  The organizers must have had trouble finding an advocate for one of the points of view.  I was pretty sure which one it would be. 

Our speakers were Sinclair Black, maverick Austin architect, and Stefanos Polyzoides, a Los Angeles architect and a co-founder of CNU.

Black advocated the "no tall building" perspective.  Or at least I think that's what he was advocating -- he talked about suing the city in the 1980s when it lifted the 200-foot height limit downtown.  ("The judge poured me out one day and retired the next," he said.   "That's how it goes.")  Black doesn't think much of the Frost Bank building; he said he coined "Giant Toenail Clipper," and wants credit for it.

Black's argument for low height limits is this:  Wouldn't it be better to have four blocks of eight story buildings, each contributing to an active street-level experience, rather than one thirty-two story building, with three blocks dead and empty?  Keeping buildings short actually contributes to a lively urban environment; tall buildings encourage property owners to hold lots vacant in hope of scoring a tall office tower. 

It's an interesting argument.  I'm skeptical that capping height would result in more "ground cover," though.  The premise is that there is a fixed demand for business and residential space downtown, so by limiting the height, you spread it over more city blocks.  But I disagree with the premise.  Downtown offers a large agglomeration of firms, hotels, residences, and restaurants.  That agglomeration produces economies of scale and spillover benefits.  The more you add, the more attractive it is (up until the point that congestion starts to detract).  Taller buildings increase downtown's carrying capacity.  A 30-story building is likely to stimulate more demand for the immediately adjacent properties than a six-story building.

Plus, I don't think a hard height cap has done D.C.'s commercial architecture any favors.  It's preserved the views of the Washington Monument and the Capitol.  That's a fair trade off there (and I don't advocate abolishing the view corridors in Austin).  But the artificial constraint on office space has undoubtedly pushed some business into the 'burbs.  Another price is bland, sterile architecture along the commercial streets, with every single building is built up precisely to the allowable height and setbacks.  It is blandly uniform.  I think a variable skyline is more interesting.

Black made another interesting point:  A building doesn't necessarily hold more units just because it's tall.  The AMLI building at 2nd and Lavaca -- designed by Sinclair's firm, Black + Vernooy -- has 220 units, despite being only seven stories tall.

The new AMLI Tower two blocks to the west has about the same number of units despite being 18 stories tall.  (Sorry for the cheesy drawing -- I ripped it off AMLI's web page.)

For the record, I like the Black + Vernooy building much better.  It's look, it's architecture, is actually pretty bland.  But it's a great urban building.  It's designed to be a building block of an urban neighborhood.  It certainly uses its footprint more efficiently than AMLI II.  (And all of its parking is underground.)

Polyzoides represented the "middle" point of view:  Density is OK as long as you have good urban design.  Austin, historically, has not.  I wasn't taking notes, but I remember his discussion of Austin being sprinkled with words like "scarred" and "diseased."  He's never seen so much parking in a downtown.  He's never seen so much dead street space.  He's never seen so many blank, dead walls lining entire blocks.  He advocates a form-based code for downtown (like any good New Urbanist).  And get rid of FAR limits.

He spent a lot of time bashing AMLI II, arguing this is exactly the wrong kind of building for a vibrant downtown. 

He's right about Austin's downtown.  It's got too many city blocks devoted to parking, too many dead spots, too many vacant lots, too many lifeless blocks.  But I don't agree that AMLI II or the other new tall buildings are bad for downtown.  The really bad buildings downtown -- the ones that choke off street life -- were all built in the 1980s or earlier.  (Which is worse:  The William Hobby complex or the Chase building at 7th and Lavaca?  I think I'll host a poll someday.) 

The new stuff has street-level retail, or at least space for street-level retail.  The new buildings participate in the Great Streets program.  While the new AMLI building is not my favorite, it will contribute to Second Street once the retail is built out.

Polyzoides doesn't like above-ground parking.  I don't either. No one does.  (It is  the main reason that AMLI II looks like it does).  A street has a better feel when the second and third stories are lined with balconies rather than garage screens.  But below-ground parking is at least twice as expensive as above-ground parking.  Some projects simply won't get built if the developer has to shell out $30,000 or $40,000 per parking space.  I'd rather have the buildings built than the land left vacant.  Screened parking is not ideal aesthetically, but it's better than a surface parking lot.  (Polyzoides also suggested wrapping the parking with habitable space.  I frankly don't know enough about that to comment.)

In the end, though, there's probably not much daylight between my view and Polyzoides'.  I think tall buildings are good for downtown.  Density is good for downtown.  It's good for the city.  All buildings need to engage the street, which means they must offer an attractive streetscape and some ground-floor uses.  (They don't all have to be clothing boutiques and coffee shops.)  But we now require this.  I think Austin's on the right path.  I think if Polyzoides were more familiar with what's going on here, he'd agree.

Comments

[Shilli]

Personally, I'd also rather have 4-8 stories everywhere instead of 40 stories in the middle and 0.4 (FAR) everywhere else. Really, I'd rather have 40 stories in the middle, 4-8 stories mixed in and surrounding that, and 0.4 surrounding that. That said, people around here are fighting pretty hard to keep the 0.4 everywhere they can, so we may have to take what we can get.

[M1EK]

Yeah, FAR is the real problem - above ground parking could just as easily exist in either the block-covering or the point-tower model, after all. Consider the Villas on Guadalupe - covers the block; still has above ground parking.

[Shilli]

I think both AMLIs are pretty nice - decent materials on the surface and decent street frontage. The big driveways shown in your pics are the biggest problem for me. Otherwise, I think they contribute to the streetscape and urban environment. The new Monarch, on the other hand, looks like it is going to be pretty bad. EIFS all over and a ground floor that doesn't engage the street well. There are plenty of others, old and new, that are similarly bad. I think until we get to a point where people living downtown don't have cars and we can build residential without parking, AMLI is about as good as we are going to get.

[AC]

My guess is that the Monarch's retail is elevated to keep it out of a flood plain. Just speculation.

[PCC]

I sympathize with the mid-rise camp -- Paris is a magnificent example, where a de facto 8-story height limit (the water pressure only went so high back then) became institutionalized. It just so happens that height still allows sunlight to reach the street, and that height allows someone to view the entire building (from askance) without having to crane their neck up. The height limit means that everyone has an equally bad view from within their apartment, but an equally wonderful view from their rooftop.

However, two big economic obstacles now stand in the way: one cost, one revenue.
Cost: Anything 5+ stories has to be built as fireproof, "Type I" construction under today's building and zoning codes, with steel/concrete frames, elevators, and structured parking. The marginal cost of going from 4 to 5 stories is essentially the same as going from 4 to 12 stories, so why not go all out?
Revenue: What sells people on high-rise living? Literally above and beyond anything else, it's the view. People will pay fortunes to have sweeping views over the landscape -- and developers can really only monetize that by going ever higher.

BTW, I think I was the one who swapped out the water decanter at that session.