Council Member Ora Houston is the first representative of the city’s first district and she’s also the first incumbent to draw a serious challenger in the 2018 election. Last Monday afternoon in East Austin, community activist Lewis Conway Jr. announced his bid for Houston’s District 1 seat. “In order to serve the people of District […]
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Posted inZoning
How a 91-year-old Supreme Court case from Ohio echoes in Austin’s zoning plan
Austin Mayor Steve Adler sat in front of nearly 200 people gathered at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in early November. He’d been invited by the Allandale Neighborhood Association in Northwest Austin to answer questions about CodeNEXT, the city’s rewrite of its Land Development Code. Adler began by hyping the city. “(Austin) is a, uh, a […]
Posted inCity Council
Austin’s two city manager finalists: Howard Lazarus and Spencer Cronk
The seemingly interminable search for Austin’s next city manager has finally been winnowed down to two applicants for the job. On Thursday, Stephen Newton of consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates, which City Council hired to lead the candidate search, recommended that Council choose either Howard Lazarus or Spencer Cronk to be Austin’s top civil servant. […]
Posted inLand Development Code
Commission wants live music venues specified in CodeNEXT
Austin city staff and live music industry stakeholders are working to add a “live music venue” use case designation to CodeNEXT, the city’s in-process building code that will determine how Austin grows over the next two-plus decades. If approved for the final draft of CodeNEXT next year, the change could make it easier to open […]
Posted inDevelopment
Council drills down on Capitol plan
An ongoing effort by the state of Texas to move much of its workforce downtown has City Council members wondering what, if anything, the city can get out of the project. The state is planning on getting started with implementation of the Texas Capitol Complex Master Plan, which envisions four new buildings around the Capitol […]
Posted inRoads
Final Guadalupe plan hits the streets
At long last, the city’s shortest corridor has its plan. The Austin Transportation Department today released the much-anticipated Guadalupe Corridor Plan, a 66-page document that calls for a multimodal revolution along the Drag. As expected, the document recommends the conversion of two car lanes into bus-only lanes on Guadalupe Street between 29th Street and Martin […]
Posted inAustin
Leaders say Austin’s Amazon hopes hang on transit, permitting issues
While Amazon executives take the next few months or more to pick the location for a massive new second headquarters, Austin real estate and business leaders hope the national audition process has caused local leaders to think about much-needed improvements throughout the city. That was one of the recurring discussion points at a panel organized […]
Posted inHousing
Austin residents protest mobile home investment class
A few dozen protesters gathered in downtown Austin on Friday to march down East Fifth Street and into the Westin hotel, where a class on investing in mobile home parks was reportedly being held. The protesters, dressed in graduation caps and gowns, held signs calling for justice and a “diploma” from Colorado-based Mobile Home University […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Let the games begin
He’s running… The 2018 election cycle has gotten off to a painfully slow start on the local level, but we finally have our first big – and thoroughly unsurprising – candidate to take the field. An eagle-eyed reader tipped us off on Sunday to the new look of www.adlerforaustin.com, the campaign website of Mayor Steve […]
Posted inEnvironment
Two districts now oppose sewage permit
The board of directors of the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District voted Monday night to protest Dripping Springs’ draft permit to discharge 995,000 gallons of wastewater per day into a tributary of Onion Creek. The vote means that the district will request that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality hold a contested case hearing and […]
Posted inHousing
In this new neighborhood, none of the homeowners own the land
Laura Soto, 38, sands several planks of wood that will serve as the trim for the outside of her new home. A few feet from her lies a plank of wood labeled “front porch,” another labeled “door.” On a break from working, Soto talks color palette. “The trim will be the rich white, the outside […]
Posted inAustin
A sick leave ordinance is coming, but details are unclear
A coalition of city leaders and advocacy groups is pushing for Austin to join many of the nation’s largest cities in requiring employers to provide employees with a certain number of paid sick days. On Nov. 15 at the People’s Community Clinic in Northeast Austin, a group of small business owners assembled to lend their […]