Kimberly Reeves

The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (CAMPO) board will have to wait until November for updated traffic projections for a potential segment of the controversial State Highway 45 Southwest, which means the new information will come after the scheduled vote on amendments to its long-range transportation plan.   CAMPO Assistant Director Buddy Needham said Wednesday […]

Both sides of the debate on the controversial proposal to build State Highway 45 Southwest were represented at Monday night’s hearing on amendments to the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s long-range plan, but the lack of a dynamic modeling study meant the hearing lost some potential sizzle.   About 100 people attended the hearing on […]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service held a hearing on Wednesday and another last night on its proposal to add four rare Central Texas salamanders to the federal endangered species list.   The hearings were separated by a mere 20 miles, but they seemed worlds apart. Wednesday’s meeting in Williamson County, in a hotel conference […]

The ironic consequence of the Mueller community is that success is making it tougher to create the mixed income neighborhood that was Mueller’s initial goal.   At the most recent Mueller Municipal Airport Advisory Commission meeting, officials with Catellus Development, the master builder of Mueller, and Foundation Communities, a nonprofit that specializes in providing affordable […]

The Community Development Commission is about to tackle one of the toughest, yet most-pressing issues in Austin’s rental market today: where to put ex-offenders.   The addition of permanent supportive housing units pushes the issue to the forefront. The challenge was finding residential housing developments that will accept people with a record of criminal behavior, […]

In a long-awaited decision, a three-judge federal court in Washington, D.C., ruled Tuesday that the statewide maps for both Congressional and state legislative districts drawn up during the 2011 legislative session by Texas Republican lawmakers discriminated against minority voters.   That decision is seen as a huge victory for voting rights groups statewide and a […]

In a time when many U.S. cities are suffering economically, construction in downtown Austin is booming.   That good fortune is not lost on Downtown Austin Alliance Executive Director Charlie Betts, who says Austin is reaping the benefit of downtown development and redevelopment, even in the light of a national recession.   “I think we’re […]

An update on the redevelopment of the Seaholm Power Plant last week underlined the importance of context and connectivity on Austin’s waterfront.   Construction to transform the decommissioned power plant into a mixed-use development is expected to begin in September. Southwest Strategy’s team, led by project manager John Rosato and architect Jim Susman of STG […]

Last summer, Capital Metro strongly signaled it was in for a rough fiscal 2012 when directors approved the agency’s budget. Austin’s transit agency faced an aging bus fleet, dwindling reserves and expenses that were driving up the cost of the MetroRail line.   A year later, interim Chief Financial Officer Billy Hamilton can say the […]

Undertaking its biggest project ever, the Austin Housing Finance Corp. is beginning work to create a 208-acre mixed-use, mixed-income master-planned community in the Colony Park neighborhood in East Austin.   The city announced a $3 million three-year federal planning grant at the beginning of the year, widely considered a coup for Austin. A creation of […]

In a hotly contested case at its final meeting before the summer break, the City Council rejected a proposal for rezoning vacant land used as neighborhood green space in the Estates at Travis Country to make way for a single-family development.   Council Member Bill Spelman joked and called it “the incredible shrinking subdivision,” but […]

Following a review of regional transportation basics, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s transit working group has shifted to key issues: how to calibrate the choices for transit and fund the projects?   The CAMPO committee, chaired by Mayor Lee Leffingwell, has worked its way through a variety of plans and options, meeting biweekly since […]