AUSTIN | Misc. Discussions - No Politics - Page 71

austlar1 · #**1401** Posted **Oct 16, 2018, 4:31 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by the Genral

Money Magazine has released a list of Sears Stores which will be closed by the end of the year. Both remaining Sears in Austin are on that list, 41st St. and Barton Creek Square.
They will be joining the demise of the other two that already closed, Tech Ridge and Lakeline, although I'm not 100% sure Lakeline is completely shut down yet. My only attachment is that I worked for Sears Lakeline for about a year. I left after one year because their customer service and support was horrible. The arrogance amongst the management was that Sears would never close because neysayers have been talking about their demise for a dozen years and we're still going strong. Classic denial. Regardless of my less than stellar opinion of Sears as a former employee, I hate to see the potential end of this one time giant in retail. I felt a sense of loss when the same thing happened to Montgomery Wards a while back. I spent many hours looking through the hundreds of pages of their huge catalogs. When the parents took us shopping to one or the other, we knew it was pretty much going to be a one stopper, especially Sears because they sold almost everything. When I worked in Maintenance at IBM, when I bought tools for our department, I bought Craftman tools from Sears because they were inexpensive and replaced for free if ever broken. I still buy Craftman and Kenmore products because of the quality and price. I have my theories as to what helped lead Sears to this, acquisition of Kmart, big mistake, and horribly dated stores and displays, along with dozens of other reasons. But while the Tech Ridge store has already been demolished as I imagine the 41st St. one may be after it closes, the Lakeline and Barton Creek Mall will showcase a reminder of how important it is to keep up and change with the times. My heart goes out to my former co-workers I enjoyed working with who will soon be out of a job, just in time for the holidays no less. I for one am sorry to see Sears go.

Monkey Wards at Barton Creek was converted into a snazzy Nordstrom store, but I don't think anything like that will happen to the Sears store there, not in this retail environment. I keep waiting for the Dillards and JC Penny stores to close at Barton Creek. I actually sometimes shop at the JCP store for certain basics, and there are always some customers there. Barton Creek Mall is such an amazing hunk of real estate, so it would not surprise me to see the whole place torn down or completely repurposed sometime in the next decade or so.

drummer · #**1402** Posted **Oct 16, 2018, 6:49 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by austlar1

Barton Creek Mall is such an amazing hunk of real estate, so it would not surprise me to see the whole place torn down or completely repurposed sometime in the next decade or so.

I've often thought that about Barton Creek as well, and that goes for a lot of malls from that era. I don't expect to see it go completely, but perhaps repurposed in part. I would be a fan of keeping the malls but adding mixed use developments on the giant parking lots - consolidating the obviously-still-needed parking into a couple of parking garages. I really like the vision of Highland Park Mall with ACC, etc., even if it's not being perfectly implemented. It's a good idea, and I think these huge buildings could be repurposed in other ways.

urbancore · #**1403** Posted **Oct 16, 2018, 2:55 PM**

[QUOTE=austlar1;8347044 Barton Creek Mall is such an amazing hunk of real estate, so it would not surprise me to see the whole place torn down or completely repurposed sometime in the next decade or so.[/QUOTE]

I hope, I hope, I hope......BCM, the Austin State Hospital, the Texas School for the Deaf, and dare I include Camp Mabry. Redevelop these four asap, and I think you ease pressure on neighborhood gentrification for 30 years.

The only one I can really see would be BCM though. They could keep a smaller "mall" footprint, and develop all around it. It would be amazing....though I wonder what the NIMBY's would say. Is BCM in the BC Watershed that would preclude it to something like 20% impervious cover if changes to the site are made? Seems like the entire property is impervious now.

Azul · #**1404** Posted **Oct 16, 2018, 5:40 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dcbrickley

I hope, I hope, I hope......BCM, the Austin State Hospital, the Texas School for the Deaf, and dare I include Camp Mabry. Redevelop these four asap, and I think you ease pressure on neighborhood gentrification for 30 years. .

Similar vain but I saw this story on Hancock awhile back by GolfAdvisor that I found pretty interesting.

https://www.golfadvisor.com/articles...st-golf-course

It almost seems as if we need to double-down and invest fully into preserving Hancock either as a reasonable 9-hole course, multi-purpose park land, or sell it off and develop it. I'd wonder if we'll eventually see some compromise for now such as developing the corners of 41st/Red River and 38th/Red River to help the bleeding.

We vs us · #**1405** Posted **Oct 17, 2018, 1:46 PM**

Interesting and kind of scary; the Feds are reevaluating the Central Texas flood maps, and finding that the currently designated flood plains are significantly smaller than they should be.

Essentially, our 500 year flood (a 13 inch/24 hr rainfall event) should be our 100 year flood. As the post points out, the ramifications are potentially huge, putting a lot more valuable land back into the danger zone. This could possibly include the Waller Creek flood control infrastructure and all the land it was supposed to help protect.

Anyway, it's a good primer:

https://atxrealestatenews.com/2018/0...-the-city-too/

Jdawgboy · #**1406** Posted **Oct 19, 2018, 3:50 PM**

The term 100 year flood is outdated as these sorts of events are occurimg every 2-5 years due to climate change induced by global warming. We will continue to see these extreme events happen much more frequently. Just look at the so called 100 or even 500 year events that have occured since 2010 in both drought to flood extremes. I studied Environmental Sciences with a focus on climate.

austlar1 · #**1407** Posted **Oct 19, 2018, 5:57 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dcbrickley

I hope, I hope, I hope......BCM, the Austin State Hospital, the Texas School for the Deaf, and dare I include Camp Mabry. Redevelop these four asap, and I think you ease pressure on neighborhood gentrification for 30 years.

The only one I can really see would be BCM though. They could keep a smaller "mall" footprint, and develop all around it. It would be amazing....though I wonder what the NIMBY's would say. Is BCM in the BC Watershed that would preclude it to something like 20% impervious cover if changes to the site are made? Seems like the entire property is impervious now.

I think the real problems with trying to make BCM into something more urban is the fact that the overall parcel remains isolated from the rest of the city, cut off on two sides by major highways with the back of the parcel giving way to the suburban streets of inner Westlake. NIMBYs and other interested parties will never allow anything taller than four or five stories to be built there since taller buildings would loom over the entire area. The BCM property is probably going to remain semi-isolated, but it can certainly be made into something more attractive and hopefully residential in nature.

wwmiv · #**1408** Posted **Oct 19, 2018, 6:47 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dcbrickley

I hope, I hope, I hope......BCM, the Austin State Hospital, the Texas School for the Deaf, and dare I include Camp Mabry. Redevelop these four asap, and I think you ease pressure on neighborhood gentrification for 30 years.

Barton Creek Mall will likely end up with 3 story VMU infill on the parking lots and adaptive reuse of the existing structure, with significant open space.

The Austin State Hospital has had whispers of redevelopment for years, either by the state rehabbing and expanding the current hospital or by selling the land and relocating.

People here have talked about the Texas School for the Deaf redeveloping their SoCo stretch with street facing retail. The only way they’d ever do that is as part of a parking garage or student housing, but neither of those things is on their current master plan.

Camp Mabry is too isolated for anything and has a useful purpose in perpetuity.

For major infill, I have my eyes on the Brackenridge Tract, the area around the Austin State Hospital, the St. Elmo area, a few of the PUDs along MoPac, and of course there are the typical Domain, Eastside, Mueller, and Highland projects, and those along our multiple VMU corridors. There’s not really much else within the city, although some Austin suburbs have some interesting new urbanism master plans (Round Rock, Georgetown, Cedar Park, San Marcos, Kyle, Hutto, Taylor, and Pflugerville).

KevinFromTexas · #**1409** Posted **Oct 21, 2018, 1:56 AM**

Metallica's show at Austin City Limits Fest from 2 weeks ago.

Around the 55 minute mark they did a cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan's Telephone Song.

• Video Link

drummer · #**1410** Posted **Oct 22, 2018, 6:12 AM**

Man, that takes me back. Thanks for posting the video!

KevinFromTexas · #**1411** Posted **Oct 22, 2018, 9:21 AM**

The City of Austin issued a boil water notice this morning for the entire City of Austin.

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/lo...nsfu9q_jMElH7c

drummer · #**1412** Posted **Oct 23, 2018, 2:34 AM**

Wow. My dad mentioned that more rain is coming with the hurricane coming from the Pacific Coast of Mexico as well. Nuts.

GoldenBoot · #**1413** Posted **Oct 24, 2018, 3:31 AM**

Just curious...why have we not seen ads from a PAC who is opposed to Prop J??? If it is bad as we think it will be, I would have hoped for more of an opposition against it.

H2O · #**1414** Posted **Oct 24, 2018, 10:55 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoldenBoot

Just curious...why have we not seen ads from a PAC who is opposed to Prop J??? If it is bad as we think it will be, I would have hoped for more of an opposition against it.

@donttrumpaustin
#donttrumpaustin

DontTrumpAustin.com

Maximusx1 · #**1415** Posted **Oct 25, 2018, 12:31 AM**

I just saw back to back TV commercials during the World Series that featured Austin.

First was a Google Pixel 3 commercial that's half in India and half in Austin. They are at Butler and Zilker parks, then they paddle board on Town Lake and then they even use a skateboarding shot from the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar parking garage (hey that's our view!). The second one was a IBM/Watson commercial that is all shot at COTA. Makes Austin look good and very cool!

resansom · #**1416** Posted **Oct 25, 2018, 5:56 PM**

I was using the Independent webcam to check out the brown water in Ladybird/Town lake. I've watched this bump grow over the past couple of years:

I was wondering if any of you knew about plans to do something about that, before it gets ridiculously large - it's already pretty ugly...

drummer · #**1417** Posted **Oct 27, 2018, 12:32 AM**

Interesting article about campaign donations for Austin City Council members...

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/aust...gns/1541568841

Quote:

Despite 10-1 Austin City Council, one area funds most campaigns

AUSTIN (KXAN) — In 2012, Austinites voted to change City Council's structure to disperse power throughout the city. The idea became the 10-1 council, with 10 council members coming from separate districts and one citywide mayor.

Six years later, however, those 10 council members still rely on campaign donations from the wealthy northwest area of town. Some council members' campaigns are nearly fully-funded by donations from people living outside their district.

Critics now worry those out-of-district donors have an outsized influence on district politics.