Urban Planning / Transportation: Austin, Planned apartment boom raises traffic questions in Barton Springs-South Lamar area

Article and graphics published by the American Statesman.

Planned apartment boom raises traffic questions in Barton Springs-South Lamar area
By Shonda Novak AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012



With Zilker Park a stone's throw away and a stretch of popular restaurants in place to lure diners, the area around South Lamar Boulevard and Barton Springs Road already has its share of traffic snarls. Now, it's about to get even more crowded, with developers working on a handful of projects that would add nearly 1,700 apartments near the busy intersection in the next few years.
While the projects are planned for an area that developers say has a shortage of apartments, some neighborhood leaders say the developments could lead to a "perfect storm" for streets and neighborhoods not built to handle the traffic load, and they question whether taxpayers could end up paying for road improvements they say will be needed.
Jeff Jack, a member of the Zilker neighborhood group, said no one is looking at the cumulative effects from all the planned projects. By Jack's calculation, nearly 2.2 million square feet of commercial and residential space could be added along South Lamar, one of 14 major city roads the city has targeted for dense mixed-use development, if all potential sites are developed. "You're looking at a perfect storm coming," said Jack, who is also chairman of the City of Austin's Board of Adjustment. "It has the potential to turn South Lamar into a parking lot for much of the day, and that will force even more cut-through traffic through Zilker, as if we did not have a serious safety problem already."
At least six apartment projects are either planned or under construction in the area. Two of the new projects are proposed for Barton Springs Road, along the street's "restaurant row." A venture controlled by Kurt Simons Co. plans to start construction in the second quarter of this year on a 225-apartment complex that would replace the 30-unit Mobile Manor mobile home park just east of Chuy's restaurant. Immediately west of Chuy's, Mill Creek Residential Trust plans to break ground by late summer on 223 apartments on vacant land between Sterzing and Robert E. Lee roads that abuts the Lady Bird Lake hike-and-bike trail. Both projects still need to complete some city approvals, agents for the developers say.
Those two developments are in addition to three planned projects and one already under construction along nearby South Lamar Boulevard. Work has already started on a 298-unit project by Post Properties Inc. that is rising just south of the Saxon Pub on South Lamar. The first units are scheduled to be ready for tenants late this year.
Combined, those six projects would add 1,688 apartment units in the Barton Springs-South Lamar area. Bringing that many new residences into the area raises a number of infrastructure questions, Zilker neighborhood representatives say.Their concerns are not just for their neighborhood west of South Lamar, they say, but for neighborhoods surrounding the other corridors where city leaders aim to steer dense, vertical mixed-use development.

Andy Elder, president of the Zilker Neighborhood Association, said the city's goal of spurring intense development along major city roads is not working as envisioned. The mixed-use policy "was designed with the idea it was going to reduce car dependence, and that's not happening," Elder said. "It's bringing just as many cars as a suburban development. If I had a wish list now, it's could we have a breather and look at what (vertical mixed use) is coming to before we even think about taking another step. I don't think there's a whole lot of appreciation for how it's going to work and what changes should happen in the future."

As an ex-officio member of the City Planning Commission, Jack said he has been pressing his case to commissioners about road and sewer costs associated with dense projects planned along targeted city streets. He said he's concerned the city is "encouraging development patterns that will continue to offload the infrastructure costs to the taxpayers." "The expectation that we're going to be able to absorb all that road traffic is pretty wishful thinking," Jack said.

George Zapalac, a city official who supervises the review of applications for new development, acknowledges that neighbors' traffic concerns are legitimate. But he said travel patterns along those roads "will not transform overnight but will evolve over time." "To some extent there is a 'chicken and egg' situation, in that development of more vertical mixed-use projects will create a stronger demand for alternative transportation modes — particularly transit, walking and bicycling — that will help alleviate the effects of increased automobile usage over time," Zapalac said by email.

Larry Warshaw, a developer of Barton Place, the condo project behind Austin Java that brought 270 units to the area when it opened in 2010, said neighbors' traffic concerns are unfounded. "It is widely accepted that residential projects do not materially add to traffic problems," Warshaw said. "Urban residential development is the answer, not the problem. When neighborhood activists use traffic as a tactical argument to oppose a residential project, it means they don't actually have any substantive reason to oppose the project, other than the fact that they are simply afraid of change."

In the case of the apartment projects planned for South Lamar, Zapalac said, most did not exceed the anticipated traffic counts to trigger a traffic impact study, "and therefore cannot be required to contribute toward off-site improvements."

Jack maintains that a developer's share of road improvement costs typically is only a fraction of the total amount required. He cited a project planned for Walsh Tarlton just west of Barton Creek Square mall, where he said the developer will have to pay only $71,000 of the $675,000 of traffic improvements to make the project work.
Zapalac said federal law limits how much the city can expect developers to pay for transportation improvements.
The U.S. Supreme Court "has ruled that a developer can only be required to contribute funding in proportion to the direct impact of his or her project on the transportation system, and cannot be obligated to correct a pre-existing problem, so in most cases the contribution from an individual development will be less than the total cost of making the improvement," Zapalac said. "We do try to collect funding from all the projects that contribute to a particular problem, but usually this private funding will have to be supplemented by public funds in order to implement a transportation improvement."

Nikelle Meade, an Austin attorney representing Mill Creek, the developer planning apartments on the mobile-home site, said she thinks the traffic concerns are "a little bit Chicken Little."

"A lot of people who want this type of living environment don't want to drive their cars every day," Meade said. They're probably two-person households with one car, she said, and "much less likely to have a daily commute or get in a car and drive where they want to go."

Mike Young, co-founder of Chuy's, the Tex-Mex restaurant next to two of the proposed apartment projects, said that although they will bring more traffic, he favors urban development over suburban sprawl. "We need more people in the core and less people in the suburbs," Young said. "I'd rather see 200 units built on Barton Springs Road than 200 homes" built in the suburbs. "It's easier to manage traffic if everything is compact," versus sprawl, where you have "huge transportation problems that stretch out over a long distance."

At Mobile Manor, traffic is the least of the concerns for the residents who expect to soon be displaced.  Jeff Tucker, who has lived there for more than five years, said residents have been told that once the developer secures city permits, they will be given 60 days to move, which he said could be as early as June 1. He said the Wallace family, which has owned the property since the 1940s, did well keeping it in their hands for decades. "It's valuable stuff. You don't have to be a soothsayer to figure that out," Tucker said. A community like Mobile Manor, "in the middle of a downtown metropolitan area like downtown," "is unheard of," he said. He pays $500 a month for his space, plus about $100 a month for electricity. Tucker said that the residents, some of whom have lived there for more than 20 years, have accepted their fate."Everybody's just happy to have had that opportunity," Tucker said. "It was a great run. You can't complain, man."

snovak@statesman.com; 445-3856

(Side comment: numbers in yellow are calculated daily trips based on Trip Generation 7th Edition.) Total number of daily trips generated by all developments is 11,047 which is equivalent to approximately 1,105 vehicle trips during peak hour or 946 trips using ITE's Trip Generation tables for peak hour of adjacent street.

Planned apartment complexes
1. Sterzing Street and Barton Springs Road (223 units) [1,491 generated trips]
2. 1717 Toomey Road (225 units) [1,503 generated trips]
3. South Lamar Boulevard and Juliet Street (340 units) [2,194 generated trips]
4. South Lamar and Treadwell Street (400 units) [2,554 generated trips]
5. 1219 S. Lamar (202 units) [1,364 generated trips]

Currently under construction
6. 1500 S. Lamar(298 units) [1,941 generated trips]