Kimberly Reeves

Everyone who participated in the city’s latest affordable housing discussion could agree they wanted to see affordable units all over town; moving forward, however, has resulted in more disagreement than consensus.   Council charged the Community Development Commission late last year with the job of coming up with a policy for where to put affordable […]

The Urban Renewal Board has to make decisions on property it owns on East 12th Street today.   Late last month, the federal Housing and Urban Development Department told Austin’s Neighborhood Housing and Community Development Department that HUD was about to pull its option on two properties on East 12th Street.   Only months after […]

U.S. Rep. John Carter displayed a salamander he said was pulled from a tiny creek running underneath the intersection of State Highway 45 and Ranch Road 620 in Williamson County and called it proof that four new species of local salamanders need not be put on the endangered species list to save them.   Carter […]

The Planning Commission unanimously recommended a change of zoning for the coming 1,000-room JW Marriott despite continued opposition from fans of Las Manitas, the popular Tex-Mex restaurant that was demolished to make way for the city’s second convention hotel.   So opponents of the JW Marriott Hotel lost another fight this week when they protested […]

Imagine a place between bustling South Congress and downtown along the south side of Lady Bird Lake where visitors would travel by streetcars to enjoy a fully terraced riverfront green space and comfortably watch Austin’s infamous bats, boats and concerts from the shore.   Such was the talk on Wednesday about the work of a […]

Austin Independent School District, which is struggling with an estimated $30 million budget gap in the upcoming year, had been expected to decide whether to ask voters for a hefty tax increase at its last meeting in May. But board president Mark Williams told trustees they would wait until August.   “We don’t want to […]

(Update: After more than two hours of discussion on the dais, all seven Council members voted in favor of the master development agreement with Trammell Crow.)   Just after midnight, Council was wrestling with what to do about issues related to selling the decommissioned Green Water Treatment Plant site on Lady Bird Lake to Dallas-based […]

As work on the Waller Creek tunnel progresses, interest turned to the plans for landscaping above the tunnel as the Waller Creek Conservancy introduced the four design teams competing to create a new vision for the urban waterway.   The decade-long project looks closer to reality, though significant questions remain for how to fund the […]

The Lone Star Rail District produced a letter of support from Union Pacific at Thursday afternoon’s Travis County Commissioners Court meeting, a strong assurance that the long-awaited rail line might actually come to fruition if funding is secured.   One of the two big hurdles, as Chair Sid Covington has acknowledged, is the cooperation of […]

A joint committee of the Environmental and Parks boards agreed Wednesday night to recommend moving a large piece of commissioned granite artwork outside the gates of Barton Springs Pool when improvements are made.   The gathering inside the South Gates of Barton Springs Pool, around a makeshift podium, was possibly the least well-dressed crowd of […]

Ecologist Steven Carothers has a name for the lush closed canopy of green leafy  trees that cover his Northwest Hills neighborhood: a time bomb.   Co-Chair Mike Levy gathered Carothers and others at Monday’s Public Safety Commission meeting to discuss fire danger and fire readiness in the Central Texas region. In his opening remarks, Levy […]

The manager who has overseen the vast growth of the Austin library system is confident the newest, and most ambitious, library to date will be on time and on budget, ready to open in 2015.   At a Council work session that included updates and requests from nine departments last week, two topics rose to […]