The Case for a St. Elmo Regulating Plan

A view of the St. Elmo District near the intersection of Industrial Boulevard and Terry-O Lane, where a number of projects are now approved to rise up to 125 feet, or 10 to 12 floors. Image: Google Maps

Have you heard the good news about the North Burnet / Gateway Regulating Plan? This is the part of the monologue where people typically slam the door in our faces, but since you’re on the internet you can’t get away! Marching into the tedious swamps of land use terminology is a surefire eye-glazer, but all you really need to know is that North Burnet / Gateway is the very clunky name for the region of North Austin in the general vicinity of the Domain and Q2 Stadium — let’s just call it the NBG for short — and the Regulating Plan for that area is a zoning scheme the city adopted back in 2009 allowing the construction of bigger and taller buildings than usual.

Austin’s Booming North Burnet Corridor Could Add More Height and Housing

The raison d’être of the plan — and the city actually kinda spelled this out at the time — was that the vibes around the intersection of Burnet Road and Braker Lane were so bad it was making everyone depressed. Big parking lots and warehouses, mostly. What made the NBG plan so interesting is that these zoning changes were made without too much fuss from homeowners, which is historically what kills most of Austin’s attempts at urban density. But in this case, there weren’t many single-family homes within meaningful distance of the upzonings, with the area being pretty much entirely industrial and commercial. Huh, are there other areas of town matching that description? Take a look at what’s often called the “St. Elmo District,” or just generally the properties you’ll see in the vicinity of East St. Elmo Road on both sides of I-35:

Click for a larger view. Thank you. Image: Google Maps / James Rambin

The distances involved in St. Elmo — between the single-family homes imposing compatibility restrictions on development, and the endless warehouse and commercial sites that are increasingly suitable for redevelopment — are uncannily similar to the land use situation we find up north that made the North Burnet / Gateway area such a slam dunk for density. There’s mounting evidence that the market, such as it is, would support similar development in the St. Elmo region.

An aerial view of the St. Elmo region, looking east of South Congress Avenue from this perspective. Image: Google Maps

Recent rezonings approved by City Council involve future planned developments rising up to 125 feet inside this area, similar to the current density allowed under the NBG plan, which approves height maximums of 120 feet almost everywhere and up to 491 feet in some areas if projects participate in the area’s density bonus program. That program trades height for benefits like affordable housing and improved infrastructure, two things this area could really use. Without a similar density bonus program for projects in St. Elmo, a lot of the spot zonings currently allowing bigger buildings here are likely leaving many of those potential benefits on the table.

In South Austin, Industrial Boulevard is St. Elmo’s Next Big Deal

I’m not gonna say it’s a “no-brainer,” because the city’s planning staff went to college and I deeply respect all of their hard work, but I am nevertheless suggesting that you could essentially take all your documents for the NBG planning area and run a cheeky little find-and-replace swapping “Burnet Road” with “St. Elmo Road” and have, oh, about 70 percent of a viable plan. Obviously you’d have to figure out other fiddly stuff — throw in some stepped-back height limits around the district’s few clusters of single-family homes, make the tallest height allowances follow the central corridor of East St. Elmo Road and Industrial Boulevard, figure out how far you want the new regulating plan to extend east of the highway, and so forth.

A map of the North Burnet / Gateway region’s current height limits for projects that participate in the density bonus program defined by the area’s regulating plan. Where else in town could we do this? Where??? Image: City of Austin

It’s obviously not a trivial change, but if you were tasked by Hizzoner the Mayor himself to look at a map and pick one place in Austin where the zoning changes of the NBG plan could be copied and pasted, this is where you’d do it. Take a look at the current land use patterns of this district, not to mention the taller projects already planned for several places inside of it, and you might start asking yourself why this hasn’t happened already. As the city pursues a number of transformative zoning tweaks, we’re modestly proposing one more item on the list: St. Elmo Regulating Plan. St. Elmo Regulating Plan. St. Elmo Regulating Plan. St. Elmo Regulating Plan.