New Parkland at the Former Holly Street Power Plant Takes One Small Step

A view of the Holly Street Power Plant from the south shore of Lady Bird Lake photographed in 2009, two years after the facility ceased operations. The plant has since been demolished and decommissioned, with part of the land now under the control of the Parks and Recreation Department. Image: Matthew Rutledge / Flickr Creative Commons

We’ve followed the civic saga of East Austin’s so-called Holly Shores region for years now, but the master plan for this enormous tract of parkland on the shores of Lady Bird Lake actually dates back all the way to 2009, when City Council first tasked the Parks and Recreation Department with forming a vision for the improvement of the city-owned shoreline in this area containing Edward Rendon Sr. Park at Festival Beach, Fiesta Gardens, and the site of the former Holly Street Power Plant.

An aerial view of the Holly Street Power Plant, prior to its 2011 demolition. The service road along the shore of the lake that will be partially replaced with a trail in this area is visible in the upper left corner. Image: Austin Energy

The Holly Plant, an industrial site enabled by the era’s segregated land use policies encouraging the placement of polluting infrastructure east of I-35 to lessen its impact on the city’s white residents, was a source of anger in nearby neighborhoods for decades until the facility’s demolition in 2011, with the decommissioning process continuing for several years until approximately nine acres of the site came under the control of PARD in 2017 — the rest is occupied by an active Austin Energy substation.

The question of what to do with the site, now sitting essentially vacant beyond the substation, was a piece of the Holly Shores Master Plan’s puzzle — due to its location by other parkland, turning the land into more park space was inevitable, but how that might look has stayed up in the air for the better part of a decade. That’s why we’re glad to see even the smallest evidence of progress at the former plant, thanks to an item submitted by PARD and approved on consent last night by the city’s Planning Commission, describing a project to add 3,000 feet of trail to the site along the shoreline of the lake as part of the area’s existing Hike-and-Bike Trail.

A modified site plan from the Holly Plant’s decommissioning, with the route of the new trail at the site along the shoreline of the lake highlighted in red. The overall parkland reclaimed at the site is highlighted in green. Image: City of Austin

This plan would remove roughly 1.7 acres of asphalt from a former utility access road on the plant grounds and replace the pathway with a 12-foot-wide concrete trail running from the pedestrian bridge at Edward Rendon Sr. Park to the intersection of Pedernales and Holly Streets at the northeast end of the plant site across from Metz Park — as you can imagine, this would provide additional connectivity to other expected improvements in the area, including the Trail Foundation’s Holly Project and the city’s “wishbone” pedestrian bridge planned near Longhorn Dam.

An aerial view of the decommissioned Holly Plant site and its surroundings. The service road that will be replaced by a trail along the shoreline is visible at the center of the image. Image: Bing Maps

According to D’Anne Williams, a project manager at PARD for the Holly Shores area, the improvements will include benches along the trail and a concrete wall around the active substation on the site for safety purposes — this wall will also likely eventually feature a mural, and though details are up in the air, it’s an opportunity to join other efforts in the area to commemorate the Chicano heritage of the neighborhood.

The 2018 restoration of the mural For La Raza, originally painted in 1992 on part of a wall surrounding the power plant and marking the original Tejano history of East Austin’s gentrified East Cesar Chavez and Holly neighborhoods, was one of the first signs of progress we’d seen at the Holly Plant site in a while. Image: City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department

Due to the requirements of city code, this first step of the project will require significant plantings between the trail and the lake for erosion control and restoration of the native riparian environment. Two warehouse buildings still standing on the plant site near the path of the new trail will be closed off until PARD can conduct an engagement process to determine their possible adaptation for public use.

The Vision Plan for the Holly Shores / Edward Rendon Sr. Park at Festival Beach outlined uses for the Holly Warehouses consistent with benefiting the surrounding neighborhoods. Potential uses of the warehouse buildings included fitness classes, performing arts space, community events and a black box theater. PARD recognizes the value of the adjacency of the current structures to Lady Bird Lake as an exceptional opportunity for the community.

— City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department

Alongside this potential, Williams says one of the plant’s concrete intake structures on the shore of the lake will be converted to a “scenic overlook” of some kind — far less grand in scale, but an interesting adaptation of infrastructure not unlike plans for the former power plant intake at the Seaholm Waterfront.

The former plant’s shoreline intake seen at the center of this Street View could be adapted as a scenic overlook adjacent to the site’s new trail.

Per Williams, last night’s approval from the Planning Commission was one of the final steps before getting this project moving — PARD still needs to undergo a quality review from the Public Works Department before opening the plan’s construction to public bidding. If that process goes smoothly, we could see the start of work before the end of the year. It’s only an early step toward realizing the grand designs of the area’s full master plan, but after years of uncertainty we think any sign of life at this site is something to celebrate.