These are some of the renderings on display last night at the South Shore Vision presentation held at the Hyatt Regency.
It's important to note that none of these things are set in stone. They're just possible concepts - what they referred to at last night's presentation as "scenario planning." The purpose of last night's presentation was mainly to talk about the new analytical tool the city has to figure out what to do with each parcel. (It was developed by one of the speakers at last night's presentation - John Fregenese - and has been "fine-tuned" so to speak - to fit Austin's needs.) It sounded like a cool program. It's sort of like Sim City, but you can set certain parameters - like required number of parking spaces, amount of impervious cover allowed, FAR's, setbacks, etc, and the program will "build" the building to show you what you could put there. It would also estimate how much it would cost a developer to build, how much tax revenue the project would bring the city and how much it would cost the city to provide services for.
The program is supposed to be online in a couple of months and it will also be available for the public to use. (I'm sure some of you will have lots of fun playing around with it.) It's really very fast. They were talking about being able to have public meetings, and if someone in the audience had an idea, they would be able to plug those parameters in and the computer would show you what the project or idea would look like in a matter of minutes.
Last night's presentation (and the slide show with a lot more renderings) will eventually be online (and/or on Channel 6) as well, and it's really worth watching.
My photos didn't come out very well because of the lighting, but thought I'd share them anyway.
A wide view from the north shore of Lady Bird Lake:
Left half of the above rendering. Note the possible urban rail/pedestrian bridge connecting Trinity Street to the South Shore.
Right half of the first rendering - showing the Congress Ave. Bridge and Hyatt.
This concept is called a Green Finger. It would be different from a major artery. Although it would allow for limited traffic, it's mainly designed for pedestrians to have a pleasant walk to and from the lake and would include housing and retail.
Green Finger Rendering
Street design with urban rail
Rendering of Barton Springs Rd (East) with rail
Map of the general area - bounded by South First on the west, Lady Bird Lake on the North and east, and Bouldin Creek on the south.
Compare the above map to an
earlier one posted upthread by KevinFrom Texas. Does anyone see the big difference? In the earlier map, planners had wanted to "uncross" the intersection of Barton Springs Rd. & Riverside Drive. At last night's presentation, they said that was no longer feasible due to construction projects in the immediate area already underway.
Looking down on the 3-D model that was at last night's presentation.
I tried to take notes, but the presentation went so fast I wasn't able to take very many, but these were a few things I jotted down.
.
Although they did acknowledge that density promotes walkability, they said that diversity of land use promoted it even more - i.e. you want to have a mix of housing and retail within close proximity to one another. I think this has been one of M1EK's complaint about Mueller. (And I think it's a valid complaint.) The big box stores are so far away from most of the housing that most people will drive to get there. People were surveyed as to what types of retail establishments they wanted to be within walking distance and the number one (75%) was a grocery store.
Nature
in the city is very important. (They used the Congress Ave. Bridge bats as an example.)
75% of the region's jobs are within a 20 minute drive of the South Shore District.
Currently there are 3.5 jobs per household within the district. Planners want to bring that number down to about 1.2 - 1.4 jobs per household within the district.
It was mentioned that it would be ideal to have a lot of underground parking, but that it wasn't really financially feasible, so we might be seeing what they called the "Texas Doughnut" - 5-5 stories of retail/housing wrapped around a parking garage.
They mentioned last night that the district has about 58 street intersections per square mile and that they'd like to bring that up to about 100 intersections per square mile.
If anyone's interested, you can go to
http://www.austintexas.gov/waterfront
and sign up for their email alerts.