In the shadow of the condo

photo / Chad Hanna  

Jamison Stewart, 33, has been living well: He has an Airstream RV on a plot at Shady Grove RV Park on Barton Springs Road — rent on the plot is only $500 a month, all inclusive. In front of his RV he’s constructed a grassy mound for playing Bocce; next to that the fire pit glows, surrounded by lawn chairs presently populated by pretty girls and a couple of fresh-looking guys enjoying the fire on this chilly March night. Barton Springs is a five-minute walk at a leisurely pace. Those of us who aren’t drinking by the fire toss bocce balls in the quaking firelight and ambient, polychromatic twinkle from the lights wound around the awning of his Airstream. “You’ve got a little slice of heaven here, Jamison,” someone says. “Don’t I know it,” he replies. The comment resonates with a certain melancholy — someone cracks a beer.

More accurately, Jamison had a little slice of heaven. As of March 22 — the night of the last party at Shady Grove RV Park — Jamison will only be able to enjoy his setup for another eight days. All the residents of the park have to be out of the park by March 31, and Jamison is just about the last one left.

Then the developer will come in and the condo starts to go up. You’ve probably seen the sign if you’ve driven down Barton Springs lately:

Barton Place
Live Where Austin Plays

The developer, Constructive Ventures, pitches the building as highly energy efficient: “Barton Place is aggressively pursuing Austin Energy’s three star green building rating, which requires that recycled/renewable materials, Energy Star Appliances, and other sustainable products and practices are incorporated throughout the design. This commitment to ‘green living’ will continue after move-in, with recycling programs and environmentally friendly community initiatives.” But assuming the building will be highly energy efficient, there are nevertheless concerns from the City of Austin, residents of Barton Springs Road, and Austinites in general.

Constructive Ventures is working with Consort Inc. to move the project along. Consort Inc. submitted a building application on November 6, 2007. The city had fairly extensive concerns, all of which are outlined in their Master Comment Report. You can access both the application and the report on this page of the city’s website. Into the field that reads, “Search By Case Number or Old PIER Permit Number” type this code: SP-2007-0603C. Scroll down to the bottom of the new page and hit the “view attachment” buttons to download .pdfs explaining the current status of the application. As of right now the developers have until April 22, 2008 to answer the city’s concerns — until that happens the current application is considered not approved for that site. But this kind of back-and-forth is typical in situations like this, and given the investment that has been made, it’s highly probable that the developers will address all the city’s concerns in a proposal update by April 22. “Otherwise, the application will automatically be denied.”

photo / Chad Hanna From left to right: Mobile Manor, Barton Place, Pecan Grove 

Most of the residents on Barton Springs Road near the future construction site live in the RV parks on on either side of Shady Grove — Mobile Manor and Pecan Grove. Neither of these RV parks have any intention of going anywhere.

Robert McCartney, the manager of Pecan Grove (the largest park of the three), points out that the construction really makes life less enjoyable for people in Pecan Grove in particular. Pecan Grove already has extensive construction going on to the right of it. Now with the imminent construction of Barton Place to Pecan Grove’s left, life will become more maddening for residents. “We’re worried about the squeeze this puts on us. And some people are worried how long they’ll be able to stay before this place gets sold. You know, most people have lived here for over six years, but I don’t see anything like that happening any time soon — not for the next several years at least,” says McCartney.

photo / Chad Hanna Shady Grove RV Park before construction begins 

Then there’s the situation of current/former residents of Shady Grove to consider; they must now find other places to live. One long-time resident — who asked I not use his name — was in the middle of packing up his truck to move his family to Oak Hill RV Park when I caught up with him — “I’ve been here 12 years,” he said. “I’m surprised it’s lasted this long. But it’s a sad thing. Like a big ole dinosaur that just has to die. Anyway, I don’t have time to talk — we gotta get all this stuff on outta here. There’s really nothing to say about it.”

Residents of Barton Springs Road are also concerned that the inconveniences associated with construction will further compound the traffic situation, which is already bursting to full on Barton Springs Road approaching Lamar most hours of the day. The only road that can alleviate the tension is Toomey Road — a tiny neighborhood road just north of Barton Springs Road that runs parallel to it and is not a realistic alternative. When you also consider that Barton Place will be a 270-unit building with underground parking that will provide one parking spot for one- and two-bedroom condos and two parking spots for three-bedroom condos — that’s a large number of cars being introduced into an already congested situation — it seems that the traffic problem will only continue to worsen after move-in.

The plot of land currently occupied by Shady Grove RV Park was purchased by the Toomey family in 1922. They planted many pecan trees, which flourished on the site and from which they harvested pecans. Eventually the site was turned into an RV park, one of the first in Austin — a park kept cool by the shade of the ever-growing pecan trees, pecan trees that by now are enormous and no longer give fruit. Several trees are so big it would take two or more people holding hands to encircle a trunk. Many Austinites I’ve talked to are concerned about what’s going to happen to those big, old trees.

photo / Chad Hanna Workers prune and fertilize the largest pecan tree to stay to strengthen it to withstand the construction 

Michael Embesi, the city arborist, points out that this is a particularly difficult site to develop for many reasons, the main one being the trees. He’s been going back and forth with the developers over the course of a year trying to work out a plan that is satisfactory from a preservation perspective. “We look at interpreting the intent of the tree ordinance as it applies to this particular property. My intention is that we have a good tree plan that incorporates trees that are preserved, trees that are removed, trees that are removed with trees replanted in their place — mitigating trees — and then there’s also a special provision on this site which is that we’re preserving around five or six of these trees by transplanting them to nearby properties which should include public property for them to be a part of.” Embesi has identified the heartiest trees as candidates for transplant. It will be up to the development company to find and pay a private company to carry out the transplants. (Transplanting trees is a very tricky process that doesn’t always work.) The most impressive tree that will remain on the site is the largest of the pecan trees, located in the center of the property. The larger a tree is, the larger its root system. So to ensure that this particular tree survives, the entire root system will be preserved — which means keying out the two-story parking garage around the tree, leaving the root system untouched.

Those are some of the facts. But there are also the philosophical perspectives to consider. You’d know what I mean if you’ve ever played a game of Bocce there while the fire burns and the beer and white wine flow — someone fingers a guitar half in shadow, audible over the throbbing sound of crickets: leaves and wind: A trailer door slams shut: laughter: A beer opens with a *sssskak.* Only eight more days.

photo / Chad Hanna “More accurately, Jamison had a little slice of heaven” 

First of all there’s the affordable housing perspective. Shady Grove is a very affordable place to live, especially considering the location. It takes around $17,000 to buy a used Airstream in good condition. Then you’ve got $500 a month covering all energy and waste. In the case of Pecan Grove it’s between $360 and $415 a month. A one-bedroom condo in the same place is going to cost $272,900 all the way up to $838,000 for a three-bedroom unit. So you’re replacing one type of person with another. It’s not just the character of the city that’s altered — you remove the city’s characters and replace them with homogeneous affluence.

Naturally there is the “highest and best use” principal to take into account. Many people probably think that using the current plot of land to house an RV park (no matter how long it’s been there) is not the highest and best use of that property. Perhaps it’s not — but determining the highest and best use of a property is subjective. When you look at all the condominiums that are going up, it would seem that the city is going for an infill strategy concerning population growth — rather than moving the population farther out from the center of the city, the city wants to bring people into the center of the city and stack them on top of each other. Generally speaking this means more tax revenue for the city: For example, rather than having 200 people on 10 acres, now there are 1,000. (It should also be noted that stacking people on top of one another is more environmentally friendly than spreading them out. Though in this particular case that’s debatable since bringing more people and cars into an environmentally sensitive area will increase impact.) The other part of this equation is the hope that population density will stimulate business — where the people go, retail will follow. But in this case do we really want commercial development on land so close to Zilker Park, Barton Creek, and Barton Springs? In the center of downtown, go for it. But here, on the edge of the Green Belt?

photo / Chad Hanna The 44-story 360 Condominiums: Life Surrounds You. So do condos. 

My biggest fear is a phenomenon I call Baja Fresh Syndrome. Some years ago there was a record store called Sound Exchange at 21st and Guadalupe. (Austinites Spoon name-check the store in their song, “Anything You Want.”) On the side of this record shop Daniel Johnston painted his locally famous “Hi, How Are You” mural with the alien-looking frog. After Sound Exchange went out of business, Baja Fresh — a “fresh” Mexican fast-food franchise out of California — moved in. Of course they had to make the building look like every other store in their chain. Originally, they were going to just completely wipe out Johnston’s work of very public art to put in windows. The community revolted, so Baja Fresh worked around the art — thank goodness (though a flying eyeball was lost). That Baja Fresh location operated for a short time and then went out of business, leaving a work of art contextualized by a hollow, corporate shell of a building. It was a franchise looking for quick returns that instead failed. Imagine if the art had been totally destroyed? We don’t want to end up like Miami where a similar case of condo fever ended disastrously. What happens if the condo fails? What will we be left with?

I don’t think growth and change are bad. I understand that change is inevitable. But we have to be responsible — especially when we’re developing so close to the natural treasures of our city.

When you quantify something that once was priceless, you’ve cheapened that thing no matter how expensive its new cost.

Jamison put it well at the end of the night when the party was over, everyone gone home or crashed out, the cherry of his cigarette blooming as he took a final drag: “Thirty years from now they’ll probably tear down this condo — but these trees could go on for 150 more years. I mean, I’m not opposed to them doing something else with this land. But we should let the character of the place determine the new use, not dollars. We can build and build irresponsibly and at the end of the day we’ll end up hating this city we’ve created. We don’t want that.”

photo / Chad Hanna Goodbye, Shady Grove