North Lamar/Burnet Development Thread

[Armybrat]

Originally Posted by AusTex

Highland is now Central Austin now which is desirable. Full Stop. Old Austin attitudes are hard to advance. Outsiders know the difference.

When I moved into Bouldin 30+ years ago from out-of-state I was endlessly criticized for the poor choice. I stated that the next boom in Austin would target south of Town Lake....Now look at the neighborhood. I was also endlessly laughed at when I said East Austin would be next on the list! Location, Location, Location.

Lol
When my brother bought a little Crestview house on Piedmont in 1959, there was a working farm on the other side of his back fence.
Anderson Lane was out in the boonies, and Northwest Hills was cedar chopper country with an abandoned quarry.
Anything south of Ben White was rural woods with a few scattered houses.
And the Twin Oaks shopping strip center was the latest new thing.

[wwmiv]

I'm old Austin. Don't tar us all with the same brush.

That said:

There's a big difference between "desirable" versus "transitioning" both placed in distinction from "downscale" (or whatever other less polite word you want to choose), "new build", and "eclectic" neighborhoods for the purposes of the real estate market.

IMHO: the general pattern outside of neighborhoods platted for one-off custom built homes for the wealthy is: largely similar tract housing built for the middle class ("new build"), fallen into disrepair due to deferred maintenance ("downscale"), targeted for gentrification by the wealthy due to centralized location ("transitioning"), and then gentrified to some degree or another ("gentrifying") until the low hanging fruit are gone and the action moves to another area ("eclectic" or "desirable" depending on the thoroughness of the gentrification***).

Highland is "transitioning", it is not yet "desirable" ... and probably never will be within any of our lifetimes, and is more likely to end up being "eclectic". Until (a) the transition within the Highland neighborhood proper (e.g. the single family home dominated portion) is further along (or even begins) and (b) neighboring neighborhoods St. Johns and Georgian Acres get better. The Highland Campus is wonderful and a great addition to the area, but it is less than 1/10th of the land area of the neighborhood and is relatively disconnected from the neighborhood itself, so the ongoing developments there aren't affecting the single family home core as much as anyone here is claiming. Rather, larger market forces forcing a change of demographics in the neighborhood is causing it to get cleaned up (see below). Furthermore, none of the south or east Austin neighborhoods any of you mention are truly "desirable" neighborhoods. They are "eclectic." They contain thorough mixes of housing typologies and price points, gentrification was not complete nor thorough.

This is fundamentally different than neighborhoods like Barton Hills, Rollingwood, and Tarrytown which have way more purchase on the term "desirable" than anything else in our inner core. Doesn't mean all the rest aren't wonderful places to live (in fact, I prefer them: I live in Hyde Park, which is "eclectic"). This is yet another example of how the terminology in our housing market has allowed popularity and marketing driven groupthink to raise prices beyond what is sustainable. It isn't a math problem, it's a cultural problem. You have to moor yourself to reality for prices to ever stabilize, which means accurately describing the product being sold rather than exaggerating beyond reason. Let's moor ourselves to reality and admit that Highland is not a "desirable" neighborhood. And just for good measure: it is surrounded on two sides by worse: St Johns and Georgian Acres, both of which are more interconnected to the core part of the Highland neighborhood (St. Johns between Guadalupe and Northcrest) than even the Highland ACC Campus that's within it. The Highland ACC Campus itself functions as its own separate neighborhood.

Edit: I'd even add another category which is: "cleaned up" (or cleaning up).

Neighborhoods that don't actually experience much construction or churn in the housing stock, but that nonetheless have un-deferred their maintenance. I'd wager that Highland actually qualifies for this category rather than "transitioning." How many tear downs are we seeing in Highland? Hardly any. In order for a neighborhood to qualify as transitioning there must be new housing stock replacing old. Highland is still near uniformly the same lower middle income tract housing it was originally built as. A good south Austin equivalent is East Congress. Same housing style, same price points, same vibe, being cleaned up, but not experiencing much transition of housing stock.

***Further edit: The big difference between these two is diversity of price points. Desirable neighborhoods are those where there are near-uniformly high price points with builds and finishes rationally supporting those prices points regardless of housing typology (which may or may not be diverse), whereas eclectic departs from that in one or more of the following ways: irrationally priced housing relative to the builds and finishes of the structures, diverse price points, builds, and finishes, and diverse housing typologies intermingling in close proximity. There isn't much of inner Austin that is actually, truly, verifiably, genuinely, 100%, legitimately desirable. There's a lot of shit that's being marketed as in a desirable neighborhood so they can achieve a higher price point and pocket the commission. Those two things are not the same.

[Lobotomizer]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I'm old Austin. Don't tar us all with the same brush.

That said:

There's a big difference between "desirable" versus "transitioning" both placed in distinction from "downscale" (or whatever other less polite word you want to choose), "new build", and "eclectic" neighborhoods for the purposes of the real estate market.

IMHO: the general pattern outside of neighborhoods platted for one-off custom built homes for the wealthy is: largely similar tract housing built for the middle class ("new build"), fallen into disrepair due to deferred maintenance ("downscale"), targeted for gentrification by the wealthy due to centralized location ("transitioning"), and then gentrified to some degree or another ("gentrifying") until the low hanging fruit are gone and the action moves to another area ("eclectic" or "desirable" depending on the thoroughness of the gentrification***).

Highland is "transitioning", it is not yet "desirable" ... and probably never will be within any of our lifetimes, and is more likely to end up being "eclectic". Until (a) the transition within the Highland neighborhood proper (e.g. the single family home dominated portion) is further along (or even begins) and (b) neighboring neighborhoods St. Johns and Georgian Acres get better. The Highland Campus is wonderful and a great addition to the area, but it is less than 1/10th of the land area of the neighborhood and is relatively disconnected from the neighborhood itself, so the ongoing developments there aren't affecting the single family home core as much as anyone here is claiming. Rather, larger market forces forcing a change of demographics in the neighborhood is causing it to get cleaned up (see below). Furthermore, none of the south or east Austin neighborhoods any of you mention are truly "desirable" neighborhoods. They are "eclectic." They contain thorough mixes of housing typologies and price points, gentrification was not complete nor thorough.

This is fundamentally different than neighborhoods like Barton Hills, Rollingwood, and Tarrytown which have way more purchase on the term "desirable" than anything else in our inner core. Doesn't mean all the rest aren't wonderful places to live (in fact, I prefer them: I live in Hyde Park, which is "eclectic"). This is yet another example of how the terminology in our housing market has allowed popularity and marketing driven groupthink to raise prices beyond what is sustainable. It isn't a math problem, it's a cultural problem. You have to moor yourself to reality for prices to ever stabilize, which means accurately describing the product being sold rather than exaggerating beyond reason. Let's moor ourselves to reality and admit that Highland is not a "desirable" neighborhood. And just for good measure: it is surrounded on two sides by worse: St Johns and Georgian Acres, both of which are more interconnected to the core part of the Highland neighborhood (St. Johns between Guadalupe and Northcrest) than even the Highland ACC Campus that's within it. The Highland ACC Campus itself functions as its own separate neighborhood.

Edit: I'd even add another category which is: "cleaned up" (or cleaning up).

Neighborhoods that don't actually experience much construction or churn in the housing stock, but that nonetheless have un-deferred their maintenance. I'd wager that Highland actually qualifies for this category rather than "transitioning." How many tear downs are we seeing in Highland? Hardly any. In order for a neighborhood to qualify as transitioning there must be new housing stock replacing old. Highland is still near uniformly the same lower middle income tract housing it was originally built as. A good south Austin equivalent is East Congress. Same housing style, same price points, same vibe, being cleaned up, but not experiencing much transition of housing stock.

***Further edit: The big difference between these two is diversity of price points. Desirable neighborhoods are those where there are near-uniformly high price points with builds and finishes rationally supporting those prices points regardless of housing typology (which may or may not be diverse), whereas eclectic departs from that in one or more of the following ways: irrationally priced housing relative to the builds and finishes of the structures, diverse price points, builds, and finishes, and diverse housing typologies intermingling in close proximity. There isn't much of inner Austin that is actually, truly, verifiably, genuinely, 100%, legitimately desirable. There's a lot of shit that's being marketed as in a desirable neighborhood so they can achieve a higher price point and pocket the commission. Those two things are not the same.

Thanks for posting. I always enjoy your commentary.

[wwmiv]

I should add that the goal should be near uniform "eclecticity." Obviously we will have pockets that are nicer than others, and pockets that are less nice than others, and special purpose districts (office, hotel, entertainment, etc. like Downtown and the Domain), but our neighborhoods should all offer a diverse array of price points in a diverse array of housing typologies. All of them. Rich people need to stop selfishly gating themselves off into desirable neighborhoods and forcing the poor into downscale ghettoes while the rest of the people (the middle class) continue to experience declines in our standard of living. They have all become unmoored from the realities of life for the vast majority of us after a long stretch of governance (from roughly the 30s to the 00s) where that wasn't the case.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Sigaven

Agreed! Or at least densify the site somehow. I love the 1950s office building. Everything else can be demo'd and replaced though.

The DPS offices shouldn’t move. That’s a major driver of ridership in the light rail corridor. You can’t just have housing (origins) in a major transit corridor. You also have to have destinations. What should happen:

• redesign the complex in an urban fashion
• build a parking garage to service the governmental/bureaucratic public facing needs on site
• relocate those services into a new single building facility on site adjacent to the parking garage (however tall and however many square feet necessary)
• move the maintenance facilities to the periphery of the city
• raze everything else
• plat the remainder of the land into blocks and sell it off to developers for:
1. mixed-use, mixed-income housing
2. ground level retail facing Lamar, perhaps Koenig as well, and maybe a coffee shop and neighborhood focused boutiques at Skyland and Guadalupe
3. a park at Guadalupe and Denson across from Reilly Elementary School

The corridor does have other big developments ongoing and potential future sites as well:

The other state bureaucracy campuses (DSHS Central and the HHS Campus) are midway through refurbishment and addition master plans, so those eggs have been laid. They'll generate some inbound transit traffic, which is good for the health of the rail system. Same for the State Hospital Campus. The real action in the corridor will be the small parcels and assemblages taking advantage of height increases near stations. This will have the effect of extending our skyline through Heritage (that neighborhood will end up looking a lot like a non-student West Campus throughout) into Hyde Park (many of the older apartment complexes on Avenues A and B will be torn down and replaced with towers without parking) over the next 30 years. I sincerely hope that the historic commercial structures lining Guadalupe between 40th and 43rd remain*** and are refurbished into a hip commercial strip. We've already lost an Austin icon to a standard-issue Walgreens.


***specifically:

4301 Guadalupe
4227 Guadalupe*** must save -- has architectural merit as a mid-century streamline moderne gas station and garage and is wasted on an interior design company. I'd love to see a coffee shop and bistro in that location with the entire outdoors redesigned as a cafe seating area in a garden.
Hyde Park Theatre Bldg
All of the 4100 block, particularly the Hyde Parket Marketplace Bldg
4023 & 4029 Guadalupe

[Sigaven]

Hey as someone who lives in St John's on the west side of I-35, I always like to claim I'm in Highland because...well St Johns is still pretty

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Sigaven

Hey as someone who lives in St John's on the west side of I-35, I always like to claim I'm in Highland because...well St Johns is still pretty

I meant no hurt or mean spirited-ness. Part of how we keep those areas cheep is not just the price point of the build, but the cultural cache surrounding the neighborhood. When places don’t have insane demand (because they don’t have cultural cache), they don’t have outrageous prices detached from the fundamental quality of the built structure.

In all fairness, Austin does not have any truly impoverished areas and even our worst neighborhoods at their nadirs were substantially better than their contemporary equivalents nationally. St. Johns would pass as a generally safe lower middle class in Houston or Dallas.

[Urbannizer]

The Ander: New Residential Project Redefining Austin Living

AUSTIN, Texas, June 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Ledgestone announced today the launch of The Ander, the new ground-up residential condominium project in Austin, Texas, with architectural design by STG and interior design by EDGE MDS, LLC. Douglas Elliman Development Marketing will handle the exclusive sales and marketing for The Ander. The Perry Henderson Team at Douglas Elliman has been tapped to be the exclusive team of agents for the project.

Comprising 198 one- and two-bedroom residences ranging in size from 679 square feet to 1,457 square feet, The Ander blends eastern and western modern design elements into harmoniously organic living spaces. Located at 2001 West Anderson Lane in Uptown's Crestview neighborhood, the five-story boutique building offers residents enviable proximity to eateries, live music, curated shops and small businesses.