The city appears ready to hit the reset button on the redevelopment of its Ryan Drive property in North Austin, more than a year after selecting a development team that appeared ready to move the project forward.
Last month the city terminated its exclusive negotiating agreement with 3423 Holdings LLC, the group led by developers Ben and Peter Barlin that was chosen in 2021 to redevelop the 5.5-acre parcel to include affordable housing, parkland, creative space and other community benefits. The project – known as Crestview Village – would have made use of two adjacent parcels to add parkland and other amenities to the site, though those portions were not included for consideration in the bidding process opened by the city to select an eventual master developer.
The end of the exclusive negotiating agreement, or ENA, on the project means city staff plan to republish the initial request for proposals for local developers soon. Prior to that, City Council is scheduled to vote next week to move the Ryan Drive project away from the Economic Development Department and under the auspices of the Austin Housing Finance Corporation and the Austin Economic Development Corporation.
A similar shift has taken place with the stalled redevelopment of the former HealthSouth property downtown, with the Economic Development Department opting last month to terminate a long-standing ENA after the chosen developer wasn’t able to deliver a project that met the city’s expectations.
Council Member Leslie Pool said she and others involved in the Ryan Drive redevelopment began hearing rumblings in late 2021 that there were changes taking place among the development team that could affect its financial viability.
“The Barlin brothers won the RFP about two years ago because their vision for the development in their proposal for Crestview Village just aligned perfectly with what the neighbors wanted and it was like all boxes were ticked,” she said. “And then issues started coming up about 18 months ago or so within the team and the staff hung in there, because we all really wanted this to work, and it just clearly was not possible.”
Pool said there has already been interest in the development community about the re-release of the RFP for the parcel.
“We think that AHFC and Austin Economic Development Corporation are really well positioned to lead on these sorts of big economic development projects in the city … with more focus on deals that have complexities,” she said. “This puts (the project) into a situation where there is just more laser focus.”
Anne-Charlotte Patterson, a member of the Music Commission and resident near the Ryan Drive parcel, said she and other neighbors were excited about the proposals submitted during the city’s RFP process and had high hopes for the Crestview Village plan that was selected as the winner.
She said changes to the plans for the Crestview Station transit stop may have changed the economics of the plan, and “that the Project Connect changes maybe are part of why this all didn’t quite come together.”
Patterson said the years of involvement by neighbors may now be for naught since it will likely be difficult to raise a similar level of enthusiasm through another RFP process.
“The feeling is the community is probably just going to have a lot of fatigue about giving input on the project. People have come out to meetings, have done online surveys for years … and people have been coming out trying to be like, yes, we’re trying to be involved. We support this, we support this, we want affordable housing, we want parkland, we want better transit access. We want this flexible, creative space there,” she said. “We’re showing our support, and now it’s just like, jeez. I’m sure people are wondering if anything is ever really going to happen here.”
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Austin Housing Finance Corporation: A city tool to create housing for low- to moderate-income families in Austin. The Board of Directors is made up of the entire City Council.
Economic Development Department: This city department heads up business recruitment, urban regeneration, small business development, arts, and music for the city.
