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- The Austin area won’t be seeing a lot of bluebonnets this year. Here’s why.
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Tag Archives: SXSW
City looks for funds, including hotel tax, to cushion COVID-19 economic impact
City staff and members of City Council have fine-tuned their plans for assisting small businesses and employees facing financial difficulties from the cancellation of South by Southwest and other fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak. Council Member Jimmy Flannigan posted a…
City Council • By Chad Swiatecki • Mar 20, 2020
Council to examine aid for 'SXSW resilience' after festival's cancellation
City Council and staffers will spend much of next week looking at how to provide assistance to small businesses and workers who stand to be severely impacted by last week’s decision to cancel the South by Southwest festival. In a…
Austin • By Chad Swiatecki • Mar 12, 2020
City, businesses work to offset economic impacts of SXSW cancellation
With the cancellation of this year’s South By Southwest festival, some local businesses and charitable organizations have launched fundraising drives in an effort to provide support to businesses and employees impacted by the loss of 10 days of high-volume tourist…
Austin • By Chad Swiatecki • Mar 9, 2020
Reporter's Notebook: Drip, drip, drip
Givens has broken… It turns out that Givens Pool is failing faster than predicted, and a February memo from the Parks and Recreation Department advises its immediate closure. The department identified Givens as one of seven pools in critical condition…
Reporters' Notebook • By Austin Monitor • Mar 2, 2020
SXSW economic impact grows to new high of $355.9 million
The South by Southwest festivals created an economic impact of $355.9 million this year, an increase of about $5.3 million or about 1.5 percent from the $350.6 million figure generated last year. In its annual report using data analyzed from…
Music & Entertainment • By Chad Swiatecki • Oct 9, 2019
Should hotel taxes and festival fees contribute to public safety coffers?
Austin’s festivals are most certainly a tourist attraction. But does that mean the public safety costs associated with those events should be financed through money earmarked for arts and tourism? With Council’s vote to raise the Hotel Occupancy Tax by…
Public Safety • By Jessi Devenyns • Sep 12, 2019
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After music think tank, Austin eyeing new music census, programming
A group of leaders from prominent music cities across North America spent two days in Austin last week brainstorming the issues that have become a regular part of the economic dialogue in Austin: affordability, compatibility and sustainability. The Sound Music…
Music & Entertainment • By Chad Swiatecki • Mar 19, 2019
Nearly 434,000 scooter rides were taken during SXSW 2019
Dockless scooters were the headliner in their first year at South by Southwest. City data show the scooters outpaced rentable dockless bikes during the festival, accounting for nearly 434,000 rides over the 10 days of SXSW – 12.3 percent of…
Transportation • By Andrew Weber, KUT • Mar 19, 2019
Open data movement brings tough questions for city-led panel
With Austin chock-full of forward-thinking tech professionals and ideologues from a variety of industries attending South by Southwest, the city and several leaders behind the movement for open data gathered this week to examine where that cause is headed. The…
Austin • By Chad Swiatecki • Mar 15, 2019
Communication and expectations seen as key in move to smart cities
The term “smart cities” has a variety of roles in present-day civic planning discourse. It’s certainly a buzzword – “smart” as a descriptor appears 16 times in the titles of panels and sessions at this year’s South by Southwest conference –…
Austin • By Chad Swiatecki • Mar 14, 2019
Lessons for Austin abound in cities where crises produced affordable housing
The good news about Austin’s growing housing affordability crisis – if there can be such a thing – is that the city hasn’t suffered a natural disaster or a financial meltdown that would serve as the impetus to build new…
Housing • By Chad Swiatecki • Mar 13, 2019
CTM’s Office of Design and Delivery: Corporate workshops should not be awful
As Austin grows and city officials begin to question how their jobs are evolving to meet the demands of the tens of thousands of new residents every year, it stands to reason that the city of Austin would ask for…
