Later this month, Austin's City Council is expected to authorize the first steps of an exclusive negotiation agreement with multiple property owners that would result in the city's purchase of two full adjacent downtown blocks for the planned expansion of the Austin Convention Center, according to documents prepared by the city's Office of Real Estate Services and confirmed by ...
city politics
In 1980, Austin’s Zoning Board Made a 9-Year-Old Tear Down His Clubhouse
Forts and clubhouses, timeless portals to the secret world of kids, stand apart from adult society and its grim concerns of property and propriety -- and this usually works out just about fine, at least until those kids get old enough to hide beer inside them. But no age, innocent or otherwise, can save you from suburban residential zoning. Enforced by adults hidden inside ...
Central Austin’s Baffling Street Grid Is Entirely One Man’s Fault
Have you noticed that Austin’s street grid appears to exist outside the standard bounds of geometry? 12th Street jogs out at an angle once it crosses I-35, 28th Street is parallel to 27th Street — but not to 29th Street — and First Street intersects with Seventh Street (just past its intersection with Fifth Street). The man at fault for this jumble is William Sandusky, whose ...
Austin’s Second ‘Jenga Tower’ Could Rise at the Royal Arch Masonic Lodge
After a slightly chilly reception from the city's Historic Landmark Commission back in June, an adjusted plan for the 30-plus story tower imagined above the historic Royal Arch Masonic Lodge at 311 West Seventh Street in downtown Austin rides again at tonight's Commission meeting, and its applicants -- local architects Brett Rhode of Rhode ...
Austin’s Finally Fixing Up John Treviño Metro Park — But Not Too Much
Only twenty scant acres smaller than Zilker Park, the 330-acre tract of former ranchland at the edge of District 1 now known as John Treviño Jr. Metro Park is perhaps the second most underutilized park space in far East Austin. The first, of course, is Walter E. Long Metro Park, but the almost bizarrely ambitious $800 million master plan for that enormous potential ...
