Austin Contrarian

Street View of the Hyde Park "no walk-or-bike" tract

For the curious, here are shots of the Hyde Park tract that will be gated and locked to keep pedestrians and cyclists from using 50th St. (clipped from Google's Street View).  First, the overhead shot of the 50th St. entrance to the tract (the tract is on the left):

View Larger Map

Next, the street-level view of the 50th St. entrance (sorry, just a jpeg -- you can get to the Google street view using the link immediately above):

50th Street, of course, is a public right-of-way.  As you can see, there is already connectivity for cars as well as for walkers and bikers.   The neighborhood plan, presumably, will require the developer to replace the chain-link fence with a lockable gate  capable of blocking foot and bike traffic.

Seriously, don't blame last weekend's parking fiasco on neighborhoods

I'm frequently critical of Austin's neighborhood associations, but even I don't blame the Bouldin Creek neighborhood for last weekend's parking fiasco, when simultaneous events (Carmen at the Long Center, a convention at Palmer, and the Reggae Festival at Auditorium Shores) snarled traffic for hours and caused patrons to miss their events.

The City's line is, "Hey, we wanted to put more parking there but the neighborhood associations objected."

Even doubling the Palmer parking garage's 1,200 spaces would not have dented the demand for parking last weekend.  Regardless, the City cannot, and should not, build the parking necessary to accommodate the "perfect storm."  That's a horribly inefficient use of money and space.  And, frankly, who wants to line one of our premiere parks with 5-6 story parking garages?

It's not even clear to me that the neighborhoods were acting selfishly.  Neighborhood associations usually demand more parking than is necessary because the spillover ends up on neighborhood streets.  I'm sure Bouldin Creek knew at the time that less parking on site would mean more parking in the neighborhood streets.

Austin Lyric Opera's patrons and others who use Long Center, Palmer and Auditorium Shores need to know they can get to their events.  (I'm sure the opera lost subscribers last weekend.)  The solution is better traffic management, more shuttles, more buses on Cap Metro's regular routes, and better publicity of alternative parking.  We can't build our way out of messes like last weekend's. 

Ed Wendler Jr. on Austin development

Wendler's column in this morning's Statesman had something to irritate (or please) everyone. 

He proposes in jest a charter election to settle all development issues once and for all.  Some of his "ballot propositions" are spot on; some are just perplexing.

Proposition No. 2: Whereas the City of Austin has determined that democracy is the best form of government, and whereas democracy depends on individual participation, and whereas local control, the more localized the better, is democracy at its purest, and whereas neighborhood groups represent localized democracy, therefore, be it resolved that neighborhood groups will hold an election on every zoning case or building permit and it shall take six of seven votes of the City Council to overturn the neighborhood decision. And that includes remodeling permits for every house.

Yep.  Call this the "RG4N philosophy" of development.  All development rights belong to the "community." In practice, this means those with a vested interest in opposing change, since those without a vested interest don't have any incentive to participate.  Bad idea.

Austin's philosophy right now is to specify in advance, in excruciating detail, what's ok and what's not.  It's an inflexible and cumbersome system.   I suppose if Austin's neighborhoods had absolute control over development within their boundaries, the developer could just pay them off at the beginning, and save a lot of time and trouble.  (Seriously, there are some land-use experts who claim that this system would be more efficient.  But since getting neighbors to agree on controversial land-use issues is like herding cats, in practice this would mean no new development ever.)

Better Austin Today PAC

Several local activist groups, including ANC, RG4N and the Sierra Club, have banded together to form a local PAC:

As Austin starts gearing up for municipal elections in May, a new political action committee is hoping to turn discontent into dollars for candidates and issues.

The committee, Better Austin Today, plans to pull support from neighborhood groups, environmental and civil rights activists, social and environmental justice groups, and the small-business and local business communities.

The committee's board consists of members of some of the city's most politically active groups: the Austin Neighborhoods Council, Save Our Springs Alliance, Sierra Club in Austin, and the Central Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

It also includes more recent additions to the city's political scene, including Responsible Growth for Northcross, which was organized in response to plans to convert part of Northcross Mall in North Austin into a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

The committee says City Council members aren't listening enough, that they act in opposition to those who speak before them and who worked on neighborhood plans. The committee says there is a lack of growth management in the city. It is also concerned about the disputes over Northcross Mall and the placement of the animal shelter in East Austin, as well as issues of perceived inequality in how the city deals with East and West Austin.

Group members hope that by banding together, they can effect some change.

"It's just this feeling that everything gets done piecemeal in this city," said board member Hope Morrison of Responsible Growth for Northcross. "There is no vision.

"It's a failure of vision and leadership." 

ANC's call for action

ANC has revised the draft growth management resolution I wrote about here.  (Even some ANC supporters had trouble stomaching that one.)  It's calling the new resolution, "A Call for Action to Manage Austin's Growth."

The new resolution manages to avoid patent contradictions, such as bashing sprawl in one sentence and bashing density in the next.  But the upshot is the same:  The City Council should capitulate to ANC/neighborhood association demands, including demands to opt out of VMU.  (If only ANC would practice what it preaches by respecting the "positions of the affected . . . Neighborhood Associations."  How many times has ANC ignored the Downtown Austin Neighborhood Association's position on downtown development projects?) 

Let me give you the flavor of the "Call for Action":

A healthy future for the City of Austin that achieves our shared vision requires a viable and living growth management policy.  The ANC identifies the following as essential to success:

• Engage diverse stakeholders and the general public.
• Identify and articulate long-term goals that reflect community values.
• Develop a strategy on which to implement policies.  [AC:  ???]
• Ensure that the policy provides an equitable balance of gains and losses for all stakeholders.
• Secure the citizenry's endorsement of the policy.

"Living" is not the first adjective I would use to describe a growth management policy, although I understand why ANC prefers it to, say, "stifling."  But my main objection to this paragraph is the claim that there are "community values."  There aren't, at least not where land-use regulations are concerned.  There are people who value the status quo, and who believe it is City Council's job to maintain it.  Then there are people who value a dynamic environment, even if it means occasional friction or inconvenience.  There are people who believe that SF-3 zoned property is sacred, and those who believe the city should be making more room for multi-family.  There are those who like density because of the vitality and variety it brings, and those who hate density because of the congestion it brings.  It is no use pretending that there is any such thing as a "shared vision" or "community value"; there are profound differences among us, and we're not all going to get what we want.   

California-style zoning

Michael Barone on recent demographic trends: 

This is something few would have predicted 20 years ago. Americans are now moving out of, not into, coastal California and South Florida, and in very large numbers they're moving out of our largest metro areas. They're fleeing hip Boston and San Francisco, and after eight decades of moving to Washington they're moving out. The domestic outflow from these metro areas is 3.9 million people, 650,000 a year. High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations--these are driving many Americans elsewhere.

The result is that these Coastal Megalopolises are increasingly a two-tiered society, with large affluent populations happily contemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housing values, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at low wages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo.

As I've pointed out before, California-style zoning is a bad, bad thing to imitate.  Incumbent homeowners, through strategic NIMBYism, strangle the supply of new housing.  The high-income types bid up the price of the existing stock.  Skyrocketing prices push out the middle- and low-income classes.  The incumbents, professing alarm over rising inequality, push new regulations (inclusionary zoning, for example) that burden new development, further dampening supply.  Prices predictably continue to rise until enough people decide the city's amenities just aren't worth the price.  (The initial price peak is probably not an equilibrium since housing demand is inelastic in the short run but elastic in the long run; i.e., people won't abandon the city immediately in response to high prices.  This may partly explain the housing bubble in California and the East coast.) 

If you think that places like San Francisco and LA are already "built out" and simply can't do anything to increase the supply of housing, you're wrong.  Here's a recent example via the San Francisco Chronicle:  A developer wanted to convert an abandoned hospital just inside the Presidio National Park into 350 apartments.  The developer did not even propose expanding the building; it just wanted to subdivide the existing structure into apartments.  Thanks to the opposition of local neighborhood groups, the project has been scaled down to 186 apartments.  As part of the agreement, the developer will demolish two wings of the building.  The justification for the neighbors' demand?  These wings were "architectural blunders."  That these "blunders" have been in place since 1952 apparently was irrelevant.

Now repeat the same story twenty or fifty or a hundred times.  That's a lot of housing lost to incumbent protectionism.   

NIMBYist neighborhood plans

There are two problems with Austin's neighborhood plans:  (1) Neighborhoods don't know what ought to go on a piece of property; and (2) they don't have an incentive to care.

What I mean by "ought" is, "What use will produce the most value for the City as a whole?"  NG's just ask, "What use will benefit us the most (or harm us the least?)"   Neighborhood plans naturally end up as obstructionist documents, tailored to satisfy the "stakeholders'" most trivial preferences and concerns.    

Take the recent battle over the Time Insurance property at the corner of East Riverside and IH-35.

Special interest politics

CCosart posted this comment:

The . . . problem with NAs is that they aren’t necessarily representative. It tends to be the same small group of people rotating through the offices. In some sense, that’s a classic problem of democracy. That small group is willing to invest hours and hours, and until a large group gets motivated to unseat them it’s hard to do anything about it. The current BCNA elections are all uncontested, for example. I could re-run for my former sector rep position, but 1) I’d lose and 2) even if I won, I’d spend a lot of time tilting at windmills in meetings. It wouldn’t really be worth it unless I had a slate of similar minded people running. I’m really not sure what the answer is...

I agree it's a classic special-interest problem.  NA officers, and ANC officers in particular, tend to be single-issue kind of people.  The rest of us aren't, so our mild preferences don't register with Council.

You see the same thing with trade subsidies.  We pay more for our sugar than we ought to because US sugar producers care only about sugar tariffs, while the other 299,999,000 of us don't spend enough on sugar to care very much. (As with too-restrictive zoning, there's a large, politically unrepresented pool of victims.  With zoning, it's the future residents who will pay more for housing than they otherwise would.  With tariffs, it's third-worlders who can't make money producing sugar even though that's where their comparative advantage lies.)

It might shake things up to focus more attention on the barriers to participation put up by the neighborhood groups.  I know my NG charges a fee to join which must be paid at least ten days before any vote.  And then the meetings are scheduled erratically, with poor notice.  Real decisions are made in the planning process anyway, which as CCosart notes is run by the die hards because of the huge time commitment needed.   

Perhaps we should insist that the City planning staff meet with dissenters, rather than just the neighborhood association's planning team.  Why should the neighborhood association have the exclusive right to bargain over neighborhood planning?  The City can't say they're representative;their elections aren't up to snuff.  (It'd be like an employer giving exclusive bargaining rights to a handful of union members just because they complained the loudest.)  If nothing else, the City might force neighborhood groups to run real elections and give opposing views a fighting chance.

"Stakeholders"

A "stakeholder" is someone who holds the stakes of a wager.  It connotes a trusted, neutral party, someone disinterested in the outcome.

This is the neighborhood activist's favorite word.   Whenever there's a development to obstruct, you can bet an NA lurks nearby to complain that the developer showed too little deference to the "stakeholders." 

The NA most definitely does not use this word to mean a neutral party.  Just the opposite:  he means himself and other local homeowners.  Actually, that's too broad -- he means himself and the other dues-paying members of the local homeowners' association.  This is hardly a neutral and disinterested bunch. 

Why do NA's love this word?  It's not just their love of jargon (although you can be sure that anyone who uses "stakeholder" in a sentence will chase it with plenty of "FLUMs," "SF-3s" and "TODs").  And although "stakeholder" sounds more dignified than "activist," "advocate," or plain old "homeowner," I don't think that is why it's so popular with the status quoers either.

No, I think NAs love "stakeholder" because it is a very effective way for them to dismiss opposing views.  They've worked very hard to make "stakeholder" a synonym for "representatives of the local neighborhood association."  And they've succeeded.  Even Council staffmembers use the word as a euphemism for the neighborhood group representatives.

But this means that if you're not a local NA, then you're not a stakeholder.  If you're not a stakeholder, then you've got no stake in the outcome.  If you've got no stake in the outcome, then why should anyone care what you think?  Opposing views are thereby effectively neutralized.

It is nonsense, of course, to restrict "stakeholders" to the homeowners in the vicinity of a proposed development.  Lots of people likely will have an acute interest in the project.  (The property owner and developer have the biggest stakes of all.) If the project is to be a residential development, renters in the area have an interest in seeing their rents stabilized; more competition means smaller rent increases.  Renters in the 'burbs who can't find places close in to town have a stake in more rental units being built.  If the project's on a busy road like South Lamar, thousands of drivers a day have an interest in a new bookstore, clothing store, or Starbucks being built.  The City has an interest in the extra tax revenue.  And lots of us like dense urban projects -- we've got a stake too.

In short, the community has a stake in the typical development project. It's time to recongize this, and to stop NAs from misappropriating this word for their own cause.  Developers should meet with the stakeholders; just make sure the real stakeholders are in the room. 

A pawn by any other name . . .

Austin's neighborhood groups are gearing up to fight another development on Town Lake.  CWS Capital Partners has proposed building three 18-story towers on Riverside just east of Congress.  It will be a big development:  840 apartments and condos.  (That's about twice the size of Novare's 360, the biggest project downtown.) 

CWS wants a variance to build to within 80 feet of Town Lake; setback regulations require it to stay at least 150 feet away.  As a quid pro quo, it's offering to extend the hike-and-bike trail another third of a mile beyond its current dead end near the Statesman building.   

No other details of the project have been published.  The neighborhood groups, predictably, don't need to know any more to know they oppose it.  Their rallying cry?  "Save Town Lake!"  According to the Statesman, a South River City [i.e., Travis Heights] neighborhood rep already has announced the group's intention to fight:  "[T]he setback rule was designed to protect parkland along the shore for public benefit and should be sacrosanct." 

Well, that sounds reasonable.  We certainly ought to protect our Town Lake parkland.  And who would dispute that property along the shore should be maintained for the public's benefit?

Except the "Save Town Lake!" slogan is just a pretext.  By any objective measure, Town Lake and the hike-and-bike trail will be better off with this development than without it.

The property is now occupied by several low-rise apartment buildings.  According to the developer's attorney, some of the buildings sit within 20 feet of Town Lake.  I walked the property myself today.  Twenty feet is conservative; the buildings in places sit within a couple car lengths of the lake's banks.  In fact, at one point I found myself standing on a parking lot just four feet from the banks.  There was not enough room between that parking lot and the banks for a trail, even if there were any money to build it.  The shore behind the complex is so narrow and cramped it is off-limits to the public for all practical purposes.

So though the developer is asking for a nominal variance from the 150-foot setback requirement, what it's really proposing is to move all development 60 feet farther inland. This stretch of Town Lake will have a bigger buffer. And it will be truly accessible to the public, who will be able to enjoy it from the new hike-and-bike trail.

While I admit I don't know the financial details, I don't see how this project will be feasible without the variance.  The property consists of two irregularly shaped parcels.  Most of the western parcel is within 150 feet of the shore, as is a large chunk of the eastern parcel. I doubt a project of this scale can be done on just the sliver of remaining land.

I suspect the neighborhood groups have sized things up the same way, that no variance means no high rises.  But then they must also undertand that without the high rises, the old complex stays.  And if the old complex stays, this stretch of Town Lake will have no buffer, making a hike-and-bike trail or public access impossible.  The neighborhood groups, in other words, are perfectly willing to sacrifice these amenties -- which could be enjoyed by the entire city -- just to fight off this development.

Something is certainly "sacrosanct"; that something's just not Town Lake.