The city gave up a lot of potential revenue when it decided not to just sell that tract to the highest bidder (and zone it for whatever that bidder wanted). Instead, we were assured that playing along with the surrounding neighborhoods would yield a new urban showcase. And, no, the taxes they get from what Mueller developed into don't make up for that despite what Mueller shills will tell you. Had we just turned it over to a standard developer, we'd be making every bit as much as we do now in property taxes, and we would have gotten a nice chunk of money up front to boot (maybe could have kept some libraries open, or some pools, for many years).
Instead we got a nice suburb which cost us a lot (opportunity cost) and ruins the brand of urbanism. Every time somebody like me proposes some infill as an urbanist in one of the older Austin neighborhoods, they can point to Mueller and claim that "urban development doesn't reduce the need for parking! Everybody will drive!". Everybody does, in Mueller! People drive to that big HEB. I've driven around it a dozen times now and not seen one lousy person walking there, as I predicted when it was planned, under construction, and opened.
Mueller is a disaster for the brand of urbanism. Only those with a personal stake in pretending otherwise (like SecretAgentMan) will claim it's a success story. It's not just me. Try talking to some of the folks in AURA. Or
Chris Bradford (Austin Contrarian).
From July 2013:
(Don't rely on his "Mueller" tag; it only captures a couple of his posts). Some more here:
http://www.austincontrarian.com/aust...ealistic-.html
Or all the way back in 2007 (I had expressed concerns along these lines when I was on the UTC back in the 2000-2005 era):
http://austinzoning.typepad.com/aust...ueller_be.html
Perhaps this anectdote might help. At the beginning of this summer, I was trying to take the kids swimming. I live about eight blocks from Shipe. Was having a bad arthritis day so I drove them to the pool (as you'll see, this was a blessing in disguise).
Shipe was closed due to maintenance issues (the city doesn't have enough money to adequately maintain many of our older pools; Shipe's been having trouble for years and has been getting band-aids, very slowly, to keep it limping along). Oops. Thought about going to Ramsey - our next closest pool, but it was closed due to the lifeguard issue (which despite what the city says is fundamentally a money issue too - raise the wages a bit and more kids would go through their absurd hoops earlier in the year and be ready to go on time).
Drove to Bartholomew, which had opened a week earlier, and requires payment, but we'd been there opening weekend and enjoyed it - and they take credit cards! Line out of the door 20 people deep (which means 20 people had to leave before we'd maybe get in). Aha, I thought; I'll drive into Mueller. My wife's swum there a couple of times with the kids.
I get to their pool, go up to the counter, and they say they only take cash. Great.
At the same time our city can't maintain our own pools or staff them, I am told Mueller is great because I can use their pool, but their pool, nothing special, typical neighborhood pool - it requires that you pay unless you're a resident - cash only, and I didn't have cash.
Ended up going to the Eastside Y (we have a membership) rather than going and finding an ATM. Total time elapsed driving with kids that almost didn't get to swim at all: one hour.
Now let's consider the counterfactual where we had just zoned the whole tract medium density (even light industrial, which some had proposed!) and sold it off. City has more money in their budget, so Shipe is better maintained (maybe even rebuilt!) and is open. Boom. Done. Or, Ramsey is staffed because the city could add a buck to lifeguard wages and the kids were incented to get their apps in earlier. Boom. Done.
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