Say goodbye to the ill-fated CodeNEXT first draft this Friday, July 7: That’s the deadline to enter comments on the CodeNEXT mapping, in order to be included in version 2.0 of the code and map. And as I reported in this column last week, it’ll be the last time we use the terms “transect” and “non-transect” zones. Those zoning categories – and all the others proposed in version 1.0 – will be history, and going forward, there will be a whole new categorization scheme and a new map, in which not a single property will retain the zoning that’s on the current map.
And yet, I’m going to exhort you – everyone in Austin who owns a home or other property, or even rents long term, or cares about their neighborhood – to go take a quick look at your home or business with the CodeNEXT mapping tool (www.codenext.engagingplans.org), because it’s likely being rezoned, and that may affect what can be done with it, and its value.
But why are we commenting on a map that we know is going to change anyway? That’s a good question in terms of the overall process, but the short answer is because this may be the only comment period you have. The city Planning and Zoning Department will continue to take public comments after the deadline, presumably for consideration in the third draft, but by the time v2.0 comes out in August(?), things will be moving fast and furious through the boards and commissions, and fast-tracked toward City Council in January(??). It’s not at all clear whether there will be time made for another pass through the unwashed public.
To take the Chronicle itself as an example: We put in four comments regarding our property at 40th and I-35, basically protesting proposed downzoning from Commercial to T4MS, and from Light Office to T4-O. We argue that this stretch of interstate frontage will never be anything you’d think of calling a “Main Street,” and that the proposed rezoning would reduce height, impervious cover, and other limits, and remove the eligibility to participate in affordable housing incentive programs, and possibly remove “office” from the approved uses allowed for our office building. I say “possibly” because much of the property (and much of the neighborhood) is tabbed “T4-O” – which doesn’t exist in the guide to the zones, or in the 1,100-page code itself. But it’s the thought that counts, and whatever may replace that T4-O that’s going away anyway, it seemed important to register our desire to keep offices in our office building.
I say all that not to argue the Chronicle‘s case, but to provide an example of just some of the complications our small business ran into when looking at our little corner of the city. Multiply that by the many tens of thousands of properties in the city, and I don’t envy the CodeNEXT drafters in trying to piece this all back together. Best of luck to all of us.
This article appears in July 7 • 2017.