Kimberly Reeves

As Council Member Brewster McCracken continues to meet with stakeholder groups in the hopes of whittling down and working through issues surrounding commercial design standards, the policy conversation has narrowed to three main topics:  connectivity; redevelopment; and amenities, which include certain infrastructure standards. At a meeting last Friday, developers, architects, agents and neighborhood representatives talked […]

The high cost of energy is making the already tight Travis County budget that much harder to write this year. County budget officials began meeting this week with county departments to talk about budget requests. Over the last couple of weeks, the budget parameters have rolled out slowly. Two weeks ago, the Auditor’s Office presented […]

Supporting Austin’s music venues is an integral part of saving Austin’s music scene, Troy Dillinger, founder of Save Austin Music, told an Austin Live Music Task Force subcommittee last night.   The crowd was sparse– 6pm is not the best time to hear from venue owners – but Dillinger noted that music venue owners, like […]

Airline mergers and a downturn in the economy could be hitting Austin Bergstrom International Airport hard as it moves into the next budget cycle. Speaking to the Austin Airport Advisory Commission last night, Shane Harbison outlined some of financial factors affecting the airport right now. First, traffic has slowed slightly at the airport, a first. […]

David McGregor, the outside consultant hired by the University of Texas to lead development of plans for the Brackenridge tract, attended the Council Land Use and Transportation subcommittee meeting on Monday afternoon to talk about the public involvement process for the tract. The idea of someone representing the University of Texas attending a city planning […]

The Capital Area Council of Governments has run a computer analysis of the financial impact of the four most recent tax abatements on county government, showing that Travis County has gotten more bang for its buck from deals with high tech companies Samsung and Hewlett Packard than with retailers Home Depot and The Domain. The […]

Last week’s meeting sponsored by Council Member Brewster McCracken to discuss amendments to the city’s commercial design standards came with a spreadsheet that looked remarkably similar to the format of the spreadsheet used to revise the McMansions ordinance. Of course, the McMansions ordinance revisions took 17 meetings and dozens of hours of grueling discussion of […]

Despite opposition in some quarters, the Design Commission has taken a liking to the Barton Springs Master Plan, heaping praise upon the design elements in the proposed plan for the pool and its grounds. Consultant Al Godfrey made his 15-minute pitch to the Design Commission this week and found a much more receptive audience than […]

New revised – and even bigger – plans for a mixed-use development on the block that includes Congress at Fifth Street were presented last night at the Design Commission meeting. Developer Tom Stacy announced his plans, back in 2004, to develop half the block on Congress between Fifth and Sixth streets, to create a second […]

The Waller Creek Citizens Advisory Committee, the group vitally interested in the development along the downtown creek, has stressed the need to keep the work below ground and above ground on parallel paths and timeline. Approximately 100 people attended a Waller Creek workshop at the University of Texas in April, but the bulk of the […]

Frank Fernandez – well thought of by city officials because of his innovative homeless projects across Austin –met with some stiff opposition from the Windsor Park neighborhood at Tuesday night’s Planning Commission meeting. Fernandez’s Community Partnership for the Homeless wants to build an $8.6 million, 110-efficiency unit project on Manor Road in the Windsor Park […]

The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority has called its short-term gap financing on the next phase of toll projects innovative. At yesterday’s Texas Transportation Commission meeting, Commissioner Ted Houghton had another name for it: risky.   It is not necessarily the method of finance that bothered Houghton. Instead, Houghton was concerned about the covenants the […]