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 draft resolution on the City Council Message Board Thursday directing staff to create or use […]
SXSW
Organizers of the massive annual festival that takes over the City of Austin each March. SXSW has donated to the Capital of Texas Media Foundation.
Posted inAustin
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 post on Council’s web forum titled “SXSW Resilience Plan,” Council Member Jimmy Flannigan laid out […]
Posted inAustin
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 activity. On Saturday, Mayor Steve Adler, Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt and Sen. Kirk Watson […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
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 in the 2014 Aquatics Assessment. Since then, $260,000 has been spent toward its continued operation, […]
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
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 Greyhill Advisors, the festival broke down the total figure into a $182.1 million impact from […]
Posted inPublic Safety
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 2 cents on Aug. 8, this question returned for debate at the Public Safety Commission […]
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
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 Cities Think Tank – an event off the beaten path of official South by Southwest […]
Posted inTransportation
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 the 3.5 million scooter rides since the scooters descended upon Austin last April. Still, nearly […]
Posted inAustin
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 March 12 gathering at Capital Factory wasn’t an official part of SXSW; instead, presented by the […]
Posted inAustin
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 – but it’s also a slippery Rorschach test for how local, state and federal leaders view […]
Posted inHousing
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 homes for low-income residents. But Austin and other growing cities can still learn from New […]
Posted inAustin
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 guidance from larger municipalities around the country. With the spirit of SXSW coursing through the […]