The meeting was held on June 5 at 7 pm. Contact Team members were present as well as various members from the neighborhood.
Toyota Permit
Toyota is still reviewing comments from the City of Austin on their permit, but they aim to finalize it by late June, allowing it to proceed to the Planning Commission within the next three to six weeks. The team has compiled the initial feedback from the neighborhood, which can be seen here: Toyota Permit Neighborhood Feedback
Discussion
The team discussed both strategic considerations and significant concerns with the permit, including:
- What are the priority asks.
- How to best approach these priorities.
- How will trash, noise, lighting, use of neighborhood streets, and the danger of the frontage road be addressed.
The team also discussed potential solutions, which could be included in a private restrictive covenant.
Next steps
The team will request that the Councilman’s Office arrange a meeting with city staff who are reviewing the permit, so that the neighborhood can understand the parameters of what is possible. This will enable us to be prepared to answer potential questions from Toyota. Toyota’s representative is planning to come to contact team meeting in July.
The team will also send an email to Toyota that will indicate the neighborhood’s initial concerns and will ask them how they plan to address it in their design. The contact team agreed on the next steps. Contact team attendees unanimously approved this action item via voice vote, upon motion by Brian and seconded by Mike.
Anderson Square
The Anderson Square project was approved by the City Council and the covenant is now recorded with Travis County and has been posted on our website.
Park
The team discussed ensuring that the initial tranche of funding for Wooten Park is flexible enough to allocate some funds for planning. If Wooten Park were to create a formal plan, it would be more likely to receive city dollars from the next bond election. The contact team will discuss this idea with the Park Committee.
Other Concerns
A minor concern was raised regarding the restrictive covenant; upon completion of the project, Anderson Square POA will assume all duties outlined in the contract. This should be fine, but if something goes awry (e.g., terms of agreement are violated and we seek recourse), POA may not have very deep pockets, so we may be unable to recover in the worst-case scenario (e.g., failure to deliver promised funds for the park). A possible solution includes cordially reaching out to the developer contact about this, perhaps simply clarifying that all funds will be transferred before project completion and formation of the POA.
Other/misc. discussion
Backspace is closing, and the shopping center will likely be redeveloped, but it is unclear when and how.
Genuine Joe redevelopment – WNPCT is not involved, but we could potentially be if we reach out to Crestview NA to help them in the development.