The city’s comprehensive plan is starting to show its age. On Tuesday, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve a mixed-use zoning request, against staff’s recommendation, for three commercially zoned properties on the border of one of the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan’s “Job Center” nodes in Montopolis. Applicant John Stratton is requesting that 2507, 2509 […]
City of Austin Planning Commission
This commission addresses issues of land use as assigned to it by Austin’s City Code. These include the abilities “[t]o make and amend a master plan, recommend approval or disapproval of proposed zoning changes and control land subdivision within neighborhood planning areas and submit, annually, a list of recommended capital improvements.” It has sovereign authority, or the right to make final decisions on certain cases.
Posted inPreservation
Planning Commission initiates historic zoning for Emancipation Park site
A week before the release of the Mayor’s Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Equities’ 70-page report, the Planning Commission took a small step during its March 28 meeting in fixing what local historian Fred McGhee called a “broken historic preservation process” by initiating historic zoning for 2724 E. 12th Street, one of the […]
Posted inHousing
135,000 new housing units over the next decade: feasible or overly ambitious?
Socar Chatmon-Thomas points at an apartment building under construction along the south shore of Lady Bird Lake, near East Riverside Drive. “So this whole thing used to just be nothing,” said Chatmon-Thomas, who has worked in Austin real estate since 1994. “Just fields and that’s it. Nobody lived around here.” And those who did, said […]
Posted inHousing
Austin plan sets goals for more affordable housing. But where should it go?
City Council is set to vote this week on whether to adopt the city’s first-ever housing plan. The plan aims to address Austin’s growing affordability crisis by setting goals for new housing production. But apart from encouraging more affordable housing, there’s also the question of where exactly it should go. The Strategic Housing Plan sets […]
Posted inHousing
Planning Commission unanimously votes to recommend Strategic Housing Plan
It would be a stretch to call Tuesday night’s vote a confident one, but the Planning Commission nevertheless unanimously passed a motion to recommend the Austin Strategic Housing Plan to City Council at its meeting Tuesday night. The plan, if approved, will become an appendix of the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan, providing an outline of […]
Posted inLand Development Code
CodeNEXT consultants discuss the fate of conditional overlays and PUDs
Like magicians before a skeptical audience, the CodeNEXT consultants asked the land use commissioners at their March 21 joint meeting to suspend their disbelief and envision an Austin with very few planned unit developments and zero conditional overlays. Since they replaced conditional zoning site plans in the mid-1980s, conditional overlays have been used to tweak […]
Posted inLand Development Code
CodeNEXT consultants respond to accusations of dividing city
Two weeks after the Zoning and Platting Commission passed a resolution stating that the CodeNEXT draft text “provides two very different, separate codes,” the CodeNEXT consultants reassured commissioners during the joint land use work session Tuesday night that the draft does in fact propose only one code. The draft has two different types of zoning categories: the form-based […]
Posted inLand Development Code
Wider discretionary powers for Board of Adjustment envisioned in CodeNEXT draft
Assistant city attorney Brent Lloyd made a small presentation at the joint meeting of the land use commissions last Tuesday night outlining a possible reconfiguration of the Board of Adjustment’s role in city planning as part of the changes on the CodeNEXT horizon. Currently the BoA is mostly occupied by granting variances, specifically those relating […]
Posted inPreservation
Planning Commission plays Historic Landmark Commission in demolition appeal case
In the first case of its kind, the Planning Commission, acting in place of the Historic Landmark Commission, denied an appeal of demolition permits released in July. Property owner D & L Rent Properties LP originally filed for demolition of two houses at 1207 and 1209 W 22½ St. on April 20, with plans to […]
Posted inDevelopment
Planning Commission rejects waiver after conversation on racism
Remarks on how institutional racism influences the city’s historic preservation goals prompted the Planning Commission’s indecision to approve or reject a compatibility waiver for a 5-foot setback on the western side of 2724 E 12th St. during its Feb. 14 meeting. The application, made to accommodate site improvements to the multifamily Lofts at 12th Street […]
Posted inZoning
Planning Commission recommends drive-through at Oltorf intersection
Overruling objections from the East Riverside/Oltorf Neighborhood, the Planning Commission voted during its Jan. 24 meeting to move forward with a change that could bring a drive-through to the area. Applicant 1616 E Oltorf Street, LTD. requested to upzone the eponymous property from community commercial-conditional overlay to general commercial services, which would remove current prohibitive […]
Posted inLand Development Code
CodeNEXT draft presented to land use commissions
In the first “fifth Tuesday” meeting of a CodeNEXT-geared 2017 calendar, the city’s land use commissions convened to receive a presentation of the CodeNEXT draft text, which was published online the day before. The release marks a big step in the overhaul of the Land Development Code, the first comprehensive revision since 1984. Admittedly, the […]