Naked City

By Doug Potter

Hostel Territory

Noah, a Ugandan living in Vancouver, stopped by during his two-week holiday to see the capital of Texas. "Austin is a beautiful city," he said. "Up there [in Uganda], when you think of Texas you imagine cowboys, you think Dallas and Houston -- you never imagine Austin [being] like this."

As a part-time teacher, Noah travels on a small budget. He paid $14 a night to stay at the Austin Youth Hostel, the 40-bed facility whose building was just granted a reprieve from becoming office space for the city's Parks and Recreation Department (PARD).

Although the hostel raised the money for the building and has assumed the cost of its maintenance, the parks and rec department actually owns the land on Town Lake where the building stands. The hostel, which is the only full-time hostel in Austin and is one of only a handful across the state, has never paid rent for its use of the property. When the ongoing conversion of Palmer Auditorium into the Long Center for the Performing Arts displaced the PARD employees who officed there this past June, forcing them to relocate to small offices throughout the city, the department decided to move its Aquatics division to the hostel building, unless the hostel could start paying rent by November 1.

"It's not a very big building," said Bartholomew Sparrow, who sits on the hostel's board. "It's really not very suitable for offices."

The hostel launched a hasty PR effort, drumming up support from local newspapers and TV stations and knocking on the doors of City Council members. Three months later, the hostel and PARD had reached an agreement: The hostel signed a five-year lease with the department

under which it will pay $1,625 a month. That amount will come from a $1.50-per-night increase in the cost of staying at the hostel. (Current fees are $14 for Hostelling International members and $17 for nonmembers.)

While supporters of the hostel argued that the building -- built with an open floor plan reminiscent of a very large ranch house or a very small ski lodge -- would make poor office space, others point out its disadvantages as a destination for travelers.

Built far from downtown on East Riverside Drive, the hostel is, its detractors say, inconvenient and time-consuming to reach by car or bus.

But hostel residents and visitors who sat swapping stories about bus accidents in Iran and traffic tickets in Mexico responded with blank stares when asked if they minded the hostel's location. "If you've been in a bus or a car or a train for hours and hours, you don't mind stretching your legs a bit," Noah explained.

A German doctoral student, in Austin from Tulane for a week to make use of UT's Benson Latin American Collection, said he makes the same commute as the students every morning. He laughed at concerns about the hostel's location. "It's on a good bus line. There's no problem. Tell them not to move it -- it's nice."