(Further) Beside the Point

Won't somebody please think of Downtown? Won't they?

Of course, the natural rejoinder to such an entreaty – especially in light of the Green Water Treatment Plant redevelopment donnybrook – should be: What the hell else has City Council been mulling all these months?

Nevertheless, Sheryl Cole and retiring Mayor Pro Tem Betty Dunkerley valiantly soldier on, one accompanying the other on her farewell tour through the Central Business District. The latest piece of the long goodbye is a call for a Downtown Open Spaces Plan. In addition to an item today (Thursday) calling for its funding, the pair is staging a press conference at Alamo survivor (and no, we're not talking about Harry Knowles' Butt-Numb-a-Thon) Susanna Dickinson's house on Fifth Street before the council meeting. Let council draw a line in the sand – and only allow trees and shrubs to cross!

Council's other best-laid plans make command appearances: a 10:30am briefing on the Waller Creek project (ramrodded mostly by Cole), which, judging by a welter of MySpace chatter, has the scenester kids spooked about the potential touristification of creek-side music venues. Red River Walk, anyone? Council also sets a public hearing on adopting the interim – yet decades coming – update of the Austin Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan. That will fall on its special Wednesday, June 18, meeting, rescheduled so as not to fall on Juneteenth. And June 18 now also looks to be the occasion of pondering revisions to the planned unit development ordinance (see "Developing Stories"), with council pulling their PUD ordinance from today. Zoning has the Allandale, North Shoal Creek, North Loop, South Lamar, and University Hills neighborhoods weighing opting in or out of Vertical Mixed Use zoning – where neighborhoods and density shake hands and come out fighting.

Meanwhile, of special interest to the Chronicle and BTP's always responsibly imbibing co-workers is nearby Twin Liquors' zoning case, poised to allow the Hancock Center hooch vendor to relocate into the considerably more sizable former Old Navy store across the parking lot from One Chronicle Place. Someone put Old Grandad in performance fleece!

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Send fashion notes, zoning tips, and cocktail recipes to BTP at wdunbar@austinchronicle.com. Barring an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raid at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Convention in Philadelphia this weekend, the always sobersided "Point Austin" returns to this space next week.