ZAP recommends first-time zonings of former ‘Hickmuntown’ on city’s northwest edge

The Zoning and Platting Commission voted 6-2-1 to recommend first-time zonings for two plots of undeveloped land at a northwestern edge of the city in a case that emphasized the commission’s commitment to a maximalist housing policy.

The lots in question are located at 11300 and 11301 Zimmerman Lane off Farm to Market Road 620, near a Rudy’s location and a Home Depot. They were previously zoned DR, or Developmental Reserve, a placeholder district type that indicates city officials have never granted the plot a formal zoning.

The applicants – listed as Barbara Allen Agnew and Brian Matthew Smith on the report reviewed by the commission – asked for Townhouse & Condominium (SF-6), a zoning type intended for redevelopment of up to six single-family units on each plot of land.

The area of the plots, listed on Google Maps and on some real estate brochures as Four Points, was previously a rural community known as Hickmuntown, according to an entry on the Texas State Historical Association website. The entry says a “school, a church, a few businesses, and several scattered houses marked the community on county highway maps in the 1940s,” but it had disappeared from county maps by the 1980s.

What does exist today is a burgeoning network of developments centered around a few small office buildings and business parks mostly occupied by national chains, less a community than a cluster of gated communities.

The two dissenting commissioners, Lonny Stern and Felix De Portu, both noted the nature of the area in comments against the proposal.

“We’re talking about building on a substandard street that butts up to a wildlife preserve, in a fire zone,” Stern said.

“As a commissioner, I see my role as supporting smart growth, which means supporting dense, walkable housing in the urban core so that we can avoid approving low-density, disconnected sprawl in the outer ring,” he continued. “Just because Council has made mistakes in the past doesn’t mean it’s a precedent we want to repeat.”

The two lots are currently within a medium risk zone on the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, map used by the Austin Fire Department to determine the level of wildfire threat across the city and establish building regulations.

In the draft of the updated map, the risk level for the lots would be upgraded and virtually all of Northwest Austin would be considered under at least some threat from wildfires.

FM 620, a five-lane road with a speed limit of around 55 mph near the two plots at issue in the case, is not served by any public transit. Sidewalks and pedestrian features are sparse, though one crosswalk does straddle the road just north of Zimmerman.

Commissioner Alejandra Flores noted that proximity to a shopping center on the other side of that crosswalk would put the development at around a 12-minute walk from a Starbucks. De Portu pushed back on that point, saying he doubted many prospective residents would make that walk in practice.

“Let’s be real. No one’s going to walk that, and no one’s going to cross that on foot,” De Portu said.

Several residents of nearby gated development The Woods at Four Points spoke against the proposal during public comment on the item, citing concerns over traffic capacity on Zimmerman, which a few noted is mediated only by a stop sign where it meets FM 620.

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Posted In: Zoning, District 10