Naked City

Neighborhood activist Kaye Trybus has taken up the cause for an old tree. A stakeholder participant in the Town Lake Park/Palmer Auditorium/ City Coliseum makeover, Trybus is on a mission to raise a wad of cash to have the native live oak gently excavated and moved to another spot in the park. There's a fellow down near Houston who does this sort of thing for a living, and since he did it for GSD&M's pecan tree in '98, Trybus figures he can do it for the old oak in 2000. The Houston man gave her a telephone estimate of $30,000, but he was going to eyeball it this week to figure out the exact cost. Where the tree stands now, just west of Palmer on the front lawn of the parks police headquarters, it's smack in the path of where an asphalt driveway is supposed to go, leading up to what will someday be the Long Center for the Performing Arts. As architects see it, the tree and the parks police office both have to go. "You can always plant another tree," says Trybus, "but you can't plant a 300-year-old tree." So we went out to take a look at the tree and she's a real beaut' all right, standing some 40 feet tall with grackles perched merrily up and down her freckled limbs. If you're a tree hugger, you can wrap your arms around the trunk and figure she's got about 36 inches on her. By next week, we should have more details on Trybus' efforts to save the oak ...

In other reports south of the river, homeowners and South River City Citizens fear the end is near if a football field-sized Home Depot is allowed to settle in at the southwest corner of Woodward and I-35. "We wanted nothing more than offices for this area because this is a residential neighborhood," says Betty Weed, who lives in the nearby Sherwood Oaks neighborhood. She says she fears Blunn Creek, which lies just west of the proposed 16-acre site, would be harmed from parking lot runoff, and that the high volume of traffic would wreak havoc on area streets. Home Depot, represented by lawyer and neighborhood nemesis Richard Suttle, was originally set to build on a piece of property at Stassney and I-35, before Lowe's, a home-improvement rival, filing a lawsuit against Trammel Crow for breach of contract, since Lowe's had first dibs on the property. A jury last year agreed and Lowe's is now ready to open its doors at the Stassney site. But Home Depot was determined to open another South Austin store, so it settled on the Woodward/I-35 site. So far, the Planning Commission has voted 7-1 (with one member absent) not to support the proposal. Next stop: City Council, March 30 ...

The Travis County Republican Party appears to be growing further divided in the days leading up to the April 11 runoff for the local GOP chair's race. It's boiled down to a contentious battle between Becky Motal, the incumbent seeking a second term, and Supercuts franchise owner Alan Sager. Motal, accused of abandoning party members during her two-year reign, is apparently scrambling to make up for her neglect. She seems to be moving further to the right, claiming she's been a true-blue social conservative all the while. Some GOPs are going over to her side quite willingly, though, because either they find Sager too liberal (read: moderate), or they're turned off by the idea of Sager "buying" the race and running the show. Sager defends his spendthrift ways because he says it's the best way to gain name ID ...

Linda Curtis. Now that's a woman with name ID. But will it win her a seat on the City Council? Curtis has added her name to an already lengthy list of folks running for the Place 5 seat that Bill Spelman is vacating. She's running on the same "A Little Less Corruption" slogan she used last time around to get voters to pass a campaign finance ordinance.