Déjà Vu Development

Stop me if you've heard this one before: An oddly shaped parcel of state-owned land in Central Austin, currently undeveloped, is poised for imminent large-scale development. Concerned locals fear the project's impact on their lives and neighborhoods. Some elect to work with the developer, others work on finding a completely different kind of project, or perhaps no project at all. Most of them grouse about the lack of public input. And all of them realize that the state plays by its own rules here in the Capital of Texas. Well before it ends, the Triangle story spawns sequels. Or does it? Over in Oakmont Heights and Ridgelea, about a mile west of that three-cornered spat, the state -- specifically the Texas Department of Transportation -- wants to keep its land and build a new $11 million facility upon it, instead of making it available to private development. Some neighbors think that would be a better idea. Even more think the ideal use, for at least some of the property, is parkland, which is more feasible here than in Hyde Park. But others are happy to make TxDOT happy, lest they end up with their own Triangle Square. While the bones of an off-the-shelf Austin neighbor/developer conflict are still visible -- traffic, drainage, noise, congestion, property values, public participation -- the context shows just how complicated being the Capital of Texas can be, and how winding and twisted the road to the New Austin will be.

The road in this case is Bull Creek Road -- not the stretch of RR 2222 by that name, but the street running northwest from the 35th Street Cutoff, near Kerbey Lane -- and the "subject tract," as they say in the trade, is the old Austin State School Annex, which lies between Bull Creek Road and Shoal Creek (the actual waterway, not the roadway). "State School Annex" is sorta euphemistic. Back in the old days, this was the Blind, Deaf and Orphan School, serving African-American children with disabilities in the pre-integration era. (Much of the old, creepy, derelict BD&O building complex stood intact on the site as little as five years ago, though there has been clearing since.)

Now, TxDOT has for decades maintained its design teams, R&D staff and allied functions at Camp Hubbard, the building complex around the corner from the State School Annex, along MoPac north of 35th Street. (Not to be confused with the National Guard's Camp Mabry, which lies across the freeway.) Oakmont Heights is the triangular neighborhood in between Camp Hubbard and Bull Creek Road, while Ridgelea lies between there and Shoal Creek itself. For both neighborhoods, any intense development of the State School Annex is going to hurt, with increased traffic on too-small streets and increased runoff into the flood-prone creek the most obvious concerns.

For decades, this hadn't been an issue. When the BD&O moved in the early 1960s, in the last years of its existence, to an East Austin site near the Montopolis Bridge (now the Texas School for the Deaf's East Campus, which will itself be surplus property before too long), the property passed into Texas MHMR's inventory as the State School Annex and moldered for decades. Then the Legislature, in 1987, initiated the asset-management campaign that has now led MHMR to beget Triangle Square. To underscore its intentions, it yanked the State School Annex from MHMR and "sold" it to TxDOT, thus transferring millions in highway trust-fund money to the state's General Fund.

The highway department wasn't salivating for this land either, and though TxDOT has put in a few temp buildings and overflow parking for Camp Hubbard, the Bull Creek property was still viewed as surplus property, ripe for eventual private development (an option touted in the same 1987 report by Land Commissioner Garry Mauro that's now being used to oppose Triangle Square). That changed when, as TxDOT and its sister agencies began to sprawl into leased space all over town and country, the state's powers-that-is, in one of their periodic frenzies of conspicuous parsimony, enacted GSC Rule 115.50, better known as the "153" rule -- under which agencies were restricted to 153 square feet of building space per employee. This made consolidating TxDOT's HQ operations into a few locations -- preferably one -- look mighty attractive, and those 75 empty acres along Bull Creek Road even more so.

With the assistance of Page Southerland Page, Austin's leading architectural eminence, TxDOT master-planned its options, with an eye toward a new single-site campus filling the entire State School Annex. This came a cropper when, in the middle of the planning process, the Legislature again commandeered the land, splitting off the 44 acres nearest Shoal Creek as the "State Cemetery Annex," although the newly gold-plated State Cemetery is miles away, on East 11th Street. On the remaining 31 acres, TxDOT has settled for a new research and technology facility, housing some functions currently based at Camp Hubbard (which needs its own set of renovations), costing $11.4 million and built in phases over the next six years, or three state budget cycles. The first phase begins September 1, with funding duly approved by the past Legislature; the obligatory request-for-proposals (RFP) to solicit contractors went out July 15.

Which brings us back to Oakmont Heights and Ridgelea, where the locals claim to have known squat about these plans, despite their great and imminent impact upon the neighborhoods. The rub got even saltier as TxDOT's site plan, including such neighbor-friendly features as hazardous materials storage and a motor-pool maintenance yard, got revealed to the restive residents. This didn't happen until June, though TxDOT had gone through public budget hearings on the project back in January. "It points out a policy issue both here and at the Triangle," says Oakmont Heights NA president Ryan Robinson. "As the state moves to identify and develop surplus property, they're going to have to do a better job of notifying neighbors and come up with a procedure."

What aggrieves many neighbors is that TxDOT has such a procedure for soliciting public input in its projects. Formalized in 1995, the rules -- contained in Title 43, Part 1, Chapter 2, Subchapter C of the Texas Administrative Code -- call for "early coordination with (other) agencies, local governmental entities, and the public." Different flavors of public input -- meetings, public meetings, public hearings -- are prescribed when projects (among other criteria) adversely affect neighboring property. And if a project could have a negative environmental impact -- like the use of hazardous materials in sensitive watersheds -- an even more detailed input process kicks in, tied with a mandated progression of environmental assessments.

None of this has happened, or likely will happen, over at the State School Annex, despite Page Southerland Page's own assessment that "plans for the Bull Creek site have been a sensitive neighborhood issue.... Any plans for the site must address its impact on and benefits to the surrounding residential areas." Unfortunately for the neighborhoods, TAC 43(1)(2)(C) only addresses "transportation projects," not office or laboratory buildings. According to the locals who met with TxDOT in June, the agency feels no obligation to solicit public participation on the Bull Creek project at all, nor is it planning any formal environmental impact assessment. (The June meeting itself, along with one in October to which most residents were not invited, were, by this reading, proof of the goodness of the department's heart.) "That would be a real narrow and technical interpretation of the law," says Oakmont Heights NA member Paul Palmer. "It was obviously the Legislature's intent to open (projects like) this up to public input and participation, and make sure TxDOT isn't creating an environmental monster."

Since the June meeting, relations between the neighborhoods and TxDOT have thawed; in Robinson's words, "They could have done a better job before at informing us, but right now the lines of communication are wide open." But with site work beginning in less than 90 days on the first phase, the potential for derailing, or even substantially altering, the project seems meager. That is, if the neighborhoods really want to run TxDOT off the tracks. "Most neighbors feel it's something we can live with, because it could be so much worse," Robinson says. "They realize it's not perfect, but I think or hope it'll be acceptable, because they (TxDOT) can do almost anything they want to -- within reason. This is within reason."

Of course, not everyone agrees. It's fair to say that Oakmont Heights is divided on the proper response to the Bull Creek project, though whether these differences are polite and philosophical or ugly and political depends on who you ask. "It appears that the plan long ago was for TxDOT to get the project through without the neighborhood giving it any trouble," says Bill Wadsworth, likely the most voluble anti-TxDOT voice in Oakmont Heights. "And that's exactly what's happened. There's not been a vote of the neighborhood or a lot of real discussion, and this is the biggest thing to hit our neighborhood in 15 years."

The dirty laundry of the Oakmont Heights NA is best left unaired here, but the internal divisions mirror widely divergent visions of the best use for the State School Annex. When Robinson says TxDOT's project could be worse, he refers specifically to the earlier plans for a single-site TxDOT megacampus, but his next-to-worst-case scenario would be large-scale private development à la Triangle Square. "It's hard to say what we'd do if there wasn't a Triangle Square to compare this to, but we don't want that kind of development here at all -- no high-intensity residential or anything commercial. That's a reason for us to maintain a good relationship with the state, because their development could be better for the neighborhood."

Wadsworth, who has devoted prodigious efforts to identifying, and very nearly brokering, a way to get TxDOT off Bull Creek Road, heartily disagrees. "Having TxDOT on both sides of us isolates the neighborhood," he says. "We've become an island. The worst that could be built there would be multi-family -- it's unlikely to be commercial -- and the neighborhood would have some power to keep it from being too dense, and even a big multifamily complex would generate about the same traffic as TxDOT." In Wadsworth's view, TxDOT's and the General Land Office's assessments of the land's value are about $3 million too low, and a sale or lease could generate more than enough revenue for TxDOT to buy a much larger site out in the country, where they could test asphalt and store hazardous chemicals without defiling Shoal Creek, threatening neighborhoods, or incurring the hassles -- to both neighbors and TxDOT -- of bringing heavy traffic through a congested Central Austin neighborhood to a site with no freeway access. "The city, the state, the taxpayers both here and throughout Texas, TxDOT and its employees, the neighborhood and any potential developer would all benefit from the sale of the property," he says.

One of Wadsworth's main objections -- to the planned motor-pool facility -- is shared by most all hands. "That's one thing the neighborhood will unite upon," says Palmer. "We don't want it there. Bull Creek Road is a residential street -- a collector, but nonetheless residential. We don't want a bunch of trucks, that are being used on projects nowhere near Central Austin, coming in to have their oil drained on a property that runs off right into Shoal Creek. That's a nightmare option."

Palmer's immediate charge, as chair of an Oakmont Heights NA committee, is to explore ways to get part of the full 75-acre parcel -- or at least part of the "State Cemetery Annex" portion, which neighbors suspect is a Legislative dodge to bank the land for eventual development -- as parkland. While Robinson calls this "a utopian scenario (that) most neighbors think is nice but not realistic," Palmer reports initial interest from both city sources and the Trust for Public Land in the idea. It would actually make some sense from the city parks perspective, since 20 acres of the "State Cemetery Annex" lies adjacent to existing Shoal Creek greenbelt and within the creek's city-defined floodway, which makes it nigh-impossible to build upon (or, if the Legislature isn't joking, suitable for burials). "We realize that it's a long shot, but it's a shot worth taking," Palmer says. "And maybe if we can stop the motor pool facility, that land could also be picked up as parkland. It's not really an all-or-nothing prospect -- we're just hopeful that something can be done."