Leaders from the cluster of live music venues along Red River Street have asked the city to dedicate $35 million to purchase venue properties in the area, as part of a larger menu of programs and spending to preserve those businesses in the face of prolonged closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. On Tuesday the […]
Red River Cultural District
Established in 2013, the Red River Cultural District runs from Sixth Street to Tenth Street and is a cultural district with the Texas Commission for the Arts. Its creation was intended to help preserve the live music venues located within the district.
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
Survey seeks data on full impact of Covid-19 on city’s music economy
The city’s major music nonprofits have partnered with a national consulting firm to conduct a survey of the economic and some health impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on Austin’s music community. The survey from Music Cities Together, which is also being conducted free of charge in other cities across the country, aims to find out […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Red tread redemption?
Red dawn(s again)… Austin Transportation and the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority are partnering up this month to add more red lanes – or “fresh Elmo,” as they’re called by transit advocates – to the city’s central transit spine. Beginning last week, work crews are painting existing bus priority lanes red on Lavaca and Guadalupe streets […]
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
ULI panel pushes real estate partnerships to help preserve, create arts spaces
With creative businesses and artists all over the city facing displacement issues caused by rising property values, the time is coming for the local real estate and development community to find ways to mix arts and music uses into new mixed-use construction. That was the message Wednesday at the Urban Land Institute’s monthly breakfast series, […]
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
City charts progress, 90-day plans for Red River streetscape improvements
The Planning and Zoning Department has allocated $1.3 million in funding from its Great Streets program that will be used for a series of long-desired improvements to the streetscape of downtown’s Red River Cultural District. A memo released last week by the Economic Development Department provides an update on work completed in the district in […]
Posted inCity Council
Another alley fence delay adds to frustration for clubs in Red River district
The city may need until late November to install a gate to an alley on Red River Street between Seventh and Eighth streets. That opens up the chance of going past a promised Nov. 1 deadline to close off an area that has long been a focal point of criminal activity in the Red River […]
Posted inParks
Waller Creek parks system now called Waterloo Greenway
The $250 million system of parks planned for areas surrounding Waller Creek in downtown Austin will be known as the Waterloo Greenway going forward, following a naming ceremony held Wednesday at the headquarters of the conservancy in charge of developing the park system. The name comes after roughly a year of planning to brand the […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Have some pride
Build that fence… The Austin Music Commission has asked the city to send a representative to its September meeting to update the group on work to address the recent rash of shootings and violence in the area around Red River and Seventh streets during evening hours when clubs and music venues in that district are […]
Posted inAustin
City hopes 10-foot fence will deter crime on Red River
The city of Austin is inching toward a “short-term” solution to a downtown alleyway that police and business owners say has become a magnet for criminal activity. Drug dealing, prostitution and human waste are frequent issues in the alley between Beerland and the old Sidewinder club on the 700 block of Red River Street, Nicole […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Eyes wide open
Four-eyed and proud… On Aug. 28, the Parks and Recreation Board considered the Camelback PUD, a proposed mixed-use development on Lake Austin being led by Jonathan Coon, the founder of 1-800 Contacts, a contact lens company that he sold for $900 million in 2012. After lauding the project, Board Member Frank Ward noted that in […]
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
Nightlife vet takes the lead of music venue district on Red River
With the appointment of the first executive director for the Red River Cultural District, changes are pretty much guaranteed for the downtown stretch that includes more than a dozen live music venues and represents one of the city’s most renowned cultural hot spots. Change has been dramatic for businesses there for the past decade as […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Is CodeNEXT spreading?
Contagion… Is the trauma of CodeNEXT spreading to other Central Texas cities? That’s the horrific question at least one Sunset Valley resident must have asked herself when she opened her mailbox recently. Inside was a postcard sent by the city of Austin inviting her to learn more about the effort to rewrite the Land Development […]