The Planning Commission voted to rezone Anderson Square in Tuesday’s meeting against staff’s recommendation.
The property is a 16-acre retail center near the intersection of North Lamar Boulevard and U.S. Highway 183 – currently home to businesses such as Hobby Lobby, Planet Fitness and a bingo hall – was proposed for redevelopment. Situated in a commercially zoned area surrounded by office and retail properties, Anderson Square Investments LLC proposed rezoning the site for mixed uses, including residential housing, with the goal of transforming the existing commercial space into a multi-use development.
The Planning Commission had postponed this item from its Nov. 12 meeting after the property owner requested an amendment to the application, seeking to increase the maximum height limits.
While the application that the commission previously considered had a maximum height of 120 feet and a minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet, the applicant amended the rezoning application to request a maximum height of 250 feet and a minimum lot size of 5,750 square feet after the developer, the Wooten Neighborhood Association and the Wooten Neighborhood Plan Contact Team reached a community benefits agreement for the extended height.
Staff recommended denying the amended rezoning request with the 250 feet height limit.
“The staff understands that the applicant has agreed to a list of community benefits with the neighborhood; however, by code these items can not be included in the PDA (Planned Development Area) overlay through the zoning ordinance,” said Sherri Sirwaitis with the Planning Department. “The staff would support this level of height and density on this tract of land if this was a rezoning request for a planned unit development (PUD).”
Though Council is scheduled to consider changes to the Planned Development Area zoning category that would allow the city to enforce promises of community benefits like affordable housing, they are not currently part of PDA zoning, which has seen an uptick in popularity since 2020. PUDs, or planned unit developments, offer similar increased entitlements for large developments but include community benefits as part of the zoning requirements.
However, staff recommended that if the commission and City Council approved the rezoning request for this property, which is within the North Lamar Transit Center station area, they include restrictions from the new ETOD ordinance. This included recommending that the property should prohibit uses like agricultural services, vehicle storage and funeral services, while making others, such as automotive sales and financial services, conditional. These measures are designed to align development with transit-oriented goals.
Some commissioners noted their concerns with the rezoning.
“I do not think that PDAs are a tool that should be used for something like this. We really should be considering PUDs or other forms of zoning,” Commissioner Awais Azhar said. “A big thank you to the neighborhood for doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but frankly it’s an unfair burden to put on neighborhoods and I hope applicants can consider that.”
“It really should be a PUD,” said Commissioner Grayson Cox, expressing opposition to the rezoning request. “I agree with everything that staff is saying.”
The rezoning request passed on the commission’s consent agenda.
Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.
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City of Austin Planning Commission: This commission addresses issues of land use as assigned to it by Austin's City Code. These include the abilities "[t]o make and amend a master plan, recommend approval or disapproval of proposed zoning changes and control land subdivision within neighborhood planning areas and submit, annually, a list of recommended capital improvements." It has sovereign authority, or the right to make final decisions on certain cases.
