Capitol Town Center
A mall, a movie theatre, office space, and a hotel by both the interstate and downtown on a hilltop offering a postcard view of the city … That was the Austin development dream of a California company in the late Eighties. Right now, that very plot of land looks much the same as when developers were pitching the idea to City Council some 12 years ago.Robertson Hill is the area bounded by I-35 on the west, the French Legation Museum on the south, San Marcos Street on the east, and East 11th on the north, and it has been part of the local history for almost as long as there was an Austin: The French Embassy opened when Texas was a Republic, the Henry Madison Cabin was built during the Confederate era, and it was home to Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson) six years before the first Longhorn went to class.
Fifty years ago, the city directory showed 82 homes and a few businesses in the Robertson Hill area. There were about half as many in the 1963 and 1973 directories. By 1983, there were only 19 homes and businesses. In the early Eighties, the city proposed turning the area into park land. Bennett Consolidated of California purchased the land and razed the remaining houses for the retail/office/hotel center in 1986. One home belonging to the Lopez family on East Ninth had been there since the mid-Fifties and was the only one not to sell.
On June 21, 1991, Bennett Consolidated presented the plan to the city for the 1.2 million-square-foot development (which would make it larger than Highland Mall in terms of actual square feet). The company solicited input from East Austinites. Some welcomed the opportunity for new jobs and shopping. Others resented the idea of a megacomplex invading their residential area. The complex was to include: a 400-room hotel; 200,000 square feet of office space; 500,000 square feet for major anchor stores; 200,000 square feet of mall shops; and an eight-screen theatre.
The developers were shooting for a spring 1994 opening. The theatre could have been showing The Lion King and Forrest Gump. The development was big news for the desolate hillside that had been empty by this time for several years. The city gave permission, but only if construction began before July 1, 1993.
Not much seemed to be happening. One article in The Austin Chronicle said the city had sent a crew out to cut the overgrown weeds and billed Bennett Consolidated for the trouble. Then came July 1993. Construction had still not commenced. Some utilities were moved, but the city said that did not a construction project make. The property was finally sold in March 2000.
About the only use for the area now is billboard space and a basketball court for students at Ebenezer Baptist School. Weeds are overgrown and trash has been dumped by people who assumed no one would care. East 11th is getting a face lift, and residential values in the neighborhood have skyrocketed — almost three fold between 1998 and 2002, according to tax appraisal records. Could development be far behind?
Remember the Lopezes, the people who refused to sell their home? They are still there, in their house, with their postcard view of downtown. 
Sources: The Austin History Center. Archives of the Austin American-Statesman, Austin Business Journal, The Austin Chronicle, Texas Monthly, The Texas Observer, and Douglas Johnson’s series on the UT Brackenridge tract from the University of Texas Journalism Department, 1988.
This article appears in Lost Austin II.