A view of the West 35th Street Randalls store back before its closure in 2021. Image: Kin Properties
The 2021 closure of the Randalls grocery store at 1500 West 35th Street, located just north of the Bryker Woods neighborhood in Central Austin, really bummed at least a few people out. Alongside the usual news coverage, some guy on Austin’s subreddit got hundreds of upvotes mourning the store’s various quirks, and you wouldn’t believe the complaining on Nextdoor — not that people do much else on that site.
But what really had us interested in the former grocery store, which occupies roughly 2.3 acres at West 35th and Crawford Streets, was what news coverage at the time said was planned to replace it — “a mixed-use development including residential,” according to the Austin American-Statesman. That project, outlined in a concept plan filed with the city back in 2022, was downright strange! Submitted by local firm Stream Realty Partners on behalf of the property’s owners at Florida-based investors Kin Properties, the project known as Crawford Street Commercial was described as “two new highrise buildings with 2 residential units, 150,837 square feet of office space, [and] 91,874 square feet of retail space in the form of a grocery store.”
An aerial view of the Randalls site and its large parking lot. Image: Kin Properties
Only two residential units? Were they huge penthouses or something? The idea was too intriguing to leave alone, so we’ve been anxiously searching for more details on this project for the last three years now. Sadly, the finer details of that unusual plan will die in a folder on somebody’s computer, with the property’s owners now in the process of rezoning the site to accommodate a Spec’s Wine & Spirits. We’ve got nothing against Spec’s, but taking a relatively large tract with community commercial and vertical mixed-use zoning designations allowing buildings up to 60 feet and rezoning it for a big-box liquor store has at least a hint of irony — and although the item was recommended to City Council on the consent agenda of the Planning Commission last week, Commissioner Maxwell chose to abstain from the case.
I did want to express some disappointment as a planning commissioner, because I firmly don’t believe that this is the highest and best use of this land . . . something like housing, we discuss endlessly in terms of how much we expect our developers to bring to the table, the community benefits we’re looking for, and the type of housing they’ll be providing. We’re not having that discussion about this case.
— Felicity Maxwell, Austin Planning Commission
Even if we aren’t bothered by a liquor store in the abstract, there’s still a really good point here. A redevelopment of a site as large as this former Randalls could potentially accommodate hundreds of new residences and thousands of square feet of commercial space, replacing the property’s significant amount of surface parking with structured garages — but everything about that hypothetical project would need to be negotiated at every stage, with all its perceived negative externalities like height or added traffic fiercely debated by nearby neighbors and city commissions for months or years. At the very same meeting as the Spec’s item, a proposal for 350 apartments on Thornton Road in South Austin drew countless comments from neighbors in opposition, including James Mays, founder of the Band Aid School of Music, who claimed that residents of new apartments didn’t contribute to Austin’s culture:
The people who move into these places are 25 to 33-year-olds who don’t really observe the Austin culture, they don’t really know much about it. They don’t buy a lot locally, they buy their things online. A lot of out-of-state license plates.
— James Mays
On the other hand, the rezoning of the former Randalls for a liquor store received no public opposition. Another victory for Austin culture!
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