A rezoning request for the former site of Rosewood Elementary in East Austin picked up a recommendation from the Planning Commission during a meeting on September 9, moving the site closer to possible redevelopment.
If successful, several addresses around the school, which is located at 2406 Rosewood Avenue, would go from single family residential zoning to general commercial services-mixed use zoning. City staff recommends the change, writing in their report that it would allow for a “reasonable use” of the property and noting it buttressed by nearby commercial services-mixed use zonings.
Some neighbors who spoke at the meeting, however, disagreed. Several took issue with the commercial zoning for addresses at the back of the property, which opens onto Sol Wilson Avenue, a small, dead-end residential street. Others expressed a more general anxiety over the prospect of offering greater entitlements on another East Austin property without a solid plan for redevelopment.
One was Christopher Page, a neighbor with the Homewood Heights Neighborhood Association, who served as the primary speaker against the rezoning. He listed several examples of land use decisions Rosewood residents have “suffered” from, including the nearby 2023 upzoning of the former site of Space 12 on East 12th Street, which he noted had yet to result in any redevelopment.
Still, Page said that the neighborhood wasn’t opposed to the property being redeveloped as long as the school itself were preserved and a compromise could be reached on other issues, like the Sol Wilson addresses.
“We’re justifiably skeptical of pitches and doing our best not to project that onto this applicant,” Page said.
The nonprofit Texans Can Academies had operated a charter school on the site that, per the organization’s mission, served students who needed to get a diploma on an accelerated schedule. Texans Can also operates schools in Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth. The current owner of the site is listed on the staff report as American Can! Cars for Kids, a nonprofit closely affiliated with Texans Can that raises funds for the latter organization by auctioning donated cars, and which also appears to operate on the site.
Texans Can was placed under state oversight in 2022 due to a rash of issues including a statistics-tampering scandal and in 2023, a teacher at the Austin campus was arrested for sexually assaulting a student. Commissioner Peter Breton asked Richard Suttle, a consultant who spoke on behalf of the applicant at the meeting, whether the Austin location of the charter had closed, which he confirmed. Suttle said they had no plans to demolish the school and were willing to work with the neighborhood to provide assurances that redevelopment wouldn’t prove harmful.
“I want to make it clear that my client fully intends to have an adaptive reuse of the existing school building, and maybe add some other, smaller things, on a neighborhood scale,” Suttle said.
Commissioner Imad Ahmed motioned to recommend the applicant’s request to City Council, seconded by commissioner Anna Lan. It carried unanimously. Speaking to his motion, Ahmed mentioned the Canopy and Springdale General developments, which he described as having been “transformational.”
“I’m very happy that we’re able to, with the proposed project here, keep some of the remnants of the history here in East Austin,” Ahmed said.
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