Later for Wildflower Commons

Last Thursday City Council handed down a politically centrist – if immediately unpopular – six-month deferment on the controversy concerning Wildflower Commons, a proposed 37-acre mixed-use project in the Barton Springs Recharge Zone. The project, on a 265-acre site with dedicated open space, has stirred strong opposition from the Save Our Springs Alliance and other environmental groups. The council action – to postpone a public hearing and decision until Aug. 20 (with Laura Morrison dissenting) – did not please the enviros in attendance. The crowd of 25 to 30 citizens wearing bright-green "No PUD" stickers was advocating a no vote that night on the planned unit development zoning request, and it came prepared to present evidence against the development. (More than 90 signed up to speak; only Robin Rather got the chance.) After the council took action without a public hearing, SOS' Bill Bunch yelled angrily at the council, followed by others. "Have the guts to vote it down!" cried Rather.

But though it failed to satisfy the opposition, the council action quietly supported the environmentalists' position. "This is a bigger victory than you think," said Council Member Randi Shade, when she stepped out into the atrium minutes later to soothe the crowd. She explained that because the developer successfully had gone through the city's process – winning endorsements from city staff, the Zoning and Platting Commission, the Environmental Board, and the Oak Hill Association of Neighborhoods – most council members didn't believe it was appropriate to flat-out reject the project. Instead, they put the onus on the developer to come back in six months with an improved project – which now will have to conform to the city's new, tougher PUD ordinance. A new proposal also must go through staff reviews and boards and commissions again; new information about environmental, water-quality, and traffic impacts can be heard.

"We've told the developer that the project submitted, as is, is not approvable," asserted Shade. "A high bar has been set; they know they have an opportunity to come back if they reach that bar; otherwise, don't bother." And of course, the recession could always kill the project in the meantime.

"As long as there are private land owners there will always be proposals for redevelopment and new development over the aquifer," Shade observed later in an e-mail to Bunch. "We won't ever get to do a touchdown dance or cross some sort of finish line. We can and must, however, continue to strive for better – better than what would have been considered last night, but also better than the Bradley Agreement, and better than the SOS Ordinance."