Council decides against historic zoning for Running Rope Ranch

Despite strong statements of support for historic zoning from two of the newest members of City Council at last week’s meeting, fewer than half of the Council members voted in favor of designating a portion of the property known as Running Rope Ranch at 7304 Knox Lane in Northwest Austin as historic.

As the Austin Monitor previously reported, the 5.77-acre property was the home of former Army Capt. Warren P. Knox and his family. For decades, they opened their home to neighborhood youth, who enjoyed horseback riding, learning outdoors skills and swimming in the ranch’s spring-fed pool.

Mayor Kirk Watson, Mayor Pro Tem Vanessa Fuentes and Council Member José Velásquez joined Council members Mike Siegel and Marc Duchen in voting to designate the property as historic in the face of opposition from the owner, Jimmy Nassour of Chase Equities Inc. Council members Ryan Alter, Krista Laine and Paige Ellis voted no. Council members Natasha Harper-Madison, Chito Vela and Zo Qadri abstained.

Carter Design Associates performed a review of the structures on the property to see if they met requirements of historical designation. Their report says that although the main residence had been modified so much it did not meet those requirements, there were two smaller, older structures that did. The reviewer recommended that those structures be moved to the environmentally sensitive area that can’t be developed anyway. Leah Bojo of the Drenner Group said her client would agree to that if Council would refrain from designating the property as historic.

Historic Preservation Officer Kalan Contreras told Council the city’s Historic Landmark Commission had voted unanimously to grant the historic designation for a site that contains evidence of Native American habitation as well as two small buildings.

However, the Zoning and Platting Commission declined to recommend the historic designation.

Although numerous neighbors wrote to Council about their fears of additional traffic, among other things, if the property is developed with the planned 20 units, none of them spoke at Council. However, Noé Elias told Council that Running Rope Ranch should be designated as historic because the property has springs that may have been used by the original indigenous inhabitants of the area.

As noted by neighbor Meghan Ellington in a letter to Council, “The Knox site is a known archaeological and historically significant site. The Texas Archeological commission has recorded the presence of burnt stone middens evidencing previous native American use of the springs. It is likely that there are other sites of significance on the rest of the Knox tract, but no investigation has been made and no preservation efforts have occurred. Allowing important common cultural sites to be disturbed and destroyed so outside financiers can squeeze maximum profit out of a site cannot be what the City of Austin is about.”

A staff member told Council that private property owners may do whatever they wish with historic artifacts on their own land.

In response to a question from Duchen, Contreras said the term “midden” refers to a collection of discarded or accumulated items that show evidence of past human habitation. That can be bones, shells, broken pots – basically “what’s left behind from people who have lived there for a while,” she said. Noting that she is not an archaeologist, she told Council those artifacts “are basically all that remains in some cases to show us what happened on a site and that there were even people there to begin with. And in this case it is Native American middens, specifically around the area of the springs, that the Texas Historical Commission let us know they are on the site somewhere.”

Siegel asked Contreras how unusual it is to find two middens on a site. She said, “This is the first case that I have had with any middens at all and I do not remember any during the last 10 years that I’ve worked with the Historic Preservation Office that had this level of archaeological findings that were known.”

In arguing for the historic designation, Siegel told his colleagues he had reached out to the archaeologists at the University of Texas to see if they could come to the meeting. He said they might be able to attend a later meeting for second and third reading, which will not happen. In urging his fellow Council members to vote for the historic designation, reading from a report on the site, Siegel also gave a more extensive definition of middens.

“Long thought to be ‘Indian dumps’ by local residents and early archaeologists, recent work shows that these sites – middens – are a rich archive of past lifeways and environment and a cultural touchstone for the region’s indigenous inhabitants. The staff report also notes that the area’s springs have served local inhabitants for hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” Siegel said.

Without the historic designation, the developer intends to build 20 living units with a single cul-de-sac entrance, according to staff. The east end of the property has significant environmental features and many heritage trees. According to the staff report and Bojo, the developer’s representative, two smaller buildings on the site that are historic will be moved to the environmentally sensitive area. That area requires environmental remediation but will not be subject to development.

“There’s several environmental features here with environmental buffers, a critical water quality zone, things like that. So, it can’t be developed anyway,” Bojo said. She stressed that a historic designation would make it significantly more difficult to do the environmental remediation necessary to bring back the springs on the property.

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Posted In: Preservation, District 10