Yeah.... I don't get it Max7; on one post, you want to see investments come our way, as you claim they are coming to "our neighbor to the north." And then you post saying that Austin is overextending itself.... I don't get your argument (if you have one.) Like kornbread said; stop thinking in terms of city limits... Just for thought: Greenville, S.C. has a population (in the city limits) of 56K. They have alot of new develompents in West-end.
What explains their developments???
Amenities? Parks? Size? It sure isn't their population size. Or maybe it is. I'm sure there are other contributing factors, but it could be that they are still small (~600K MSA) enough to not have ever had the decay of their downtown effect it as much. My point is, the evolution of their growth allowed them to build on the trend a bit easier... kind of like OKC, Raleigh.
Actually, I feel that if we hadn't grown so much in the last 30 years, we might've had more developments in the past 10.
Timing is everything: there are phases of certain "eras" that can be seen. Can you imagine if we had a cluster of buildings around The Tower Life Building? We would've had a nice(r) stock of older buildings had the Market not crashed in 1929. Had we had more office space available in the years following the crash, we might've had a stronger core and maintained a stronger office market in the CBD today. It just didn't happen that way.
There are alot of "what-if's?" and the market just hasn't demanded a massive increase in developments downtown. We are, naturally, coming to that point though, and we should, however, continue to support the smaller developments as they add to the overall goal of a better living environment DT.
We've had over 500 condos/townhomes, and 1000 apartments added/constructed (or still under construction) since 2005 in or near DT. If we continue adding units, even at the small increments, we will see a difference at some point.
We've got about 1000 units "on hold" and as soon as those finally break ground, there are a few more that will come online. This'll build up a good base for now. If the trend is now "urban" or "walkable," there are a handful of places in SA that can offer that kind of development and then those units will hit us.
Patience....