Search Results for “Waller Park Place”

(As sent from the DAA)

“The City of Austin’s Downtown Austin Plan team invites you to participate in a town hall meeting on Saturday, October 10. Details below. We hope you will attend and share your thoughts on the key issues affecting downtown.

Dear Downtown Austin Plan Stakeholder,

Please join us at a “Town Hall” Meeting and share your vision and ideas about the nine districts in Downtown Austin. On Saturday October 10th, 2009, we will be meeting to share our preliminary thoughts and recommendations — and to get your input — on some key issues facing Downtown:

– Downtown District Goals and Priorities
– Downtown Transportation
– Live Music, Art, and “Creative Culture” Policies
– Historic Resources and Preservation Policies
– Land Use and Urban Design Regulations

These issues and more are being addressed by the “Downtown Austin Plan.” For more information about the Plan, please see the project website at:http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/downtown/downtownaustinplan.htm

The specifics of the meeting are as follows:

Event: Downtown Austin Plan — Town Hall Meeting
Date: Saturday October 10, 2009 Time: 9:00 a.m. to Noon
Place: Waller Creek Center, 625 E. 10th Street Room 104
Parking: At this time, we are unsure about the availability of off-street parking, but there is on-street parking in the area. Transit: For bus route information, please consult:http://www.capmetro.org/planner/.

Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any interested individual wishing to attend.

You may receive this invitation more than once as we may have you on multiple stakeholder lists so please excuse the redundancy. If you have any questions about this event, and to RSVP, please contact Jorge Rousselin atjorge.rousselin@ci.austin.tx.us or (512) 974-2975.

The Downtown Austin Plan Team”

Downtown Austin - Parking Garage Nirvana

Blight: Something that impairs growth, withers hopes and ambitions, or impedes progress and prosperity.

In Downtown Austin nothing kills hopes, dreams, ambitions, old ladies and little children like under-developed land. According to DANA board member Roger Cauvin, in economic terms, blight can be considered an “externality,” which “are the indirect costs imposed on society by an economic activity. Pollution is an example of an externality. If economic agents (e.g. developers) aren’t made to pay for the externalities, we are effectively subsidizing harmful behavior.”

In Downtown Austin, blight manifests itself in the primary forms of:
1) parking lots (or razed lots)
2) parking garages
3) chain link fence
4) perpetual disrepair

The Northeast quadrant of Downtown Austin takes the cake for parking garages. The area is desolate and completely void of human interaction. Unimproved parking lots are scattered throughout Downtown. It could easily be argued that Downtown Austin blight reaches it’s zenith on 6th Street. (slideshow) Broken doors, windows, tattered chain link fence, destroyed ATMs, it’s all there.

As I see it, the problem of blight is rooted with the owner of the property that is creating or hosting the blight. The economic behavior of hoarding undeveloped property in the CBD is contrary to the density goals of Downtown Austin stake holders. It is also contrary to the city’s and county’s goals of collecting ad valorem taxes. Perhaps more importantly, razing your lot and wrapping it in chain link fence is contrary to the sense of community.

Over the past couple of months you’ve seen related topics discussed at Austin Contrarian. According to Chris Bradford, “We badly need a mechanism for discouraging property owners from warehousing vacant lots downtown. The solution is not to shut out all redevelopment to eliminate the risk of this kind of behavior. What we need is a vacant-lot surcharge or something like it. A surcharge calibrated to compensate the other downtown property owners, businesses and visitors for the very real cost of blighting a block. This might encourage property owners/developers to leave existing buildings in place or to fill in currently vacant lots, even if the structures are inexpensive and small.”

Well said.

-Jude

Search Results for: Waller Park Place