At Least 12 Mobility Upgrades Planned for the Rainey Street District

A rendering from a 2015 study regarding the placemaking possibilities of paving the alley space behind Rainey Street. Paving that same alley is part of this new set of improvements for the district, but there’s certainly no indication it’s going to look anything like this, so don’t get it twisted. Image: City of Austin / Baldrige Architects

As far as we can tell, the “comprehensive mobility study” of the Rainey Street area recommended by Austin’s Design Commission back in May hasn’t wrapped up yet, but that apparently doesn’t mean the city doesn’t already have some plans of its own for fixing up the area’s patchy sidewalks and other mobility infrastructure. This is great news for the neighborhood’s residents, along with the downtown Austin condo and apartment-dwellers who venture to the district on foot for drinking-related shenanigans — well, it’s really good for everybody, but it’s nice to have priorities.

Documents related to the construction of two large projects in this area — the Quincy apartment and office tower by Endeavor Real Estate Group at 93 Red River Street, and the 44 East condo tower by Intracorp located on the other end of the district at, you guessed it, 44 East Avenue — describe a schedule of fees each developer must pay for mobility improvements to offset the additional traffic load of the new buildings:

Development fees imposed upon developers building in the Rainey Street District by the city to fund various mobility improvements for the area. You’ll see many of the improvements are funded both by the Quincy and 44 East, but not all of them. Don’t ask us why the 44 East fee schedule helpfully shows the full cost of the improvements and the developer’s percentage while the Quincy version only shows the amount the developer’s paying — we don’t know either. Image: City of Austin

What’s nice about these documents is that they name each individual improvement along with the amount the developers need to contribute to each one, which is really helpful because it allows us to slap all the improvements down on a single map and look at them together. We’ve also added two extra improvement items, one part of the upcoming Rainey Street Substation project at 55 East Avenue, and the other related to the mysterious WeWork tower planned at the southwest corner of Red River and Cesar Chavez Streets — just click all the little pedestrian icons and green lines on the map below and it’ll start to make sense, we promise:

Remember, as far as we can tell the new mobility study for the district isn’t finished yet, so the projects seen above are seemingly separate from whatever recommendations that study comes out with later — though we’re sure plenty of them will compliment one another. That means we could potentially see a lot more pedestrian and transportation infrastructure improvement in this area beyond what’s being discussed here, but it’s certainly a good start, isn’t it?

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