North Burnets future outlined
North Burnets future outlinedAustin Business Journal - 2:54 PM CDT Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Its an area of Austin dominated by a multitude of uses with no clear vision and poor transportation infrastructure. Its also a part of town that could boom in coming years with projects that have the potential to drastically reshape where many Austinites shop, work and live. The 2,500-acre North Burnet/Gateway area--increasingly referred to as Austins second downtown along MoPac Expressway is the subject of a recently-completed study that provides a framework to help realize its untapped promise.
In the next three decades the area targeted in the new master plan could become home to 42,000 residential units and 13.2 million square feet of commercial space including office, retail and industrial, according to an executive summary. In its highest-density areas, buildings could reach a height of 30 stories, creating a significant second core in Austin convenient to the burgeoning northwest part of the region as well as downtown.
Last spring the city hired planning and consulting firms Carter Burgess Inc. and Land Design Studio to create a master plan for the North Burnet/Gateway area. The plan looks ahead to the long-range potential of the area bounded by Walnut Creek on the north, Metric Boulevard on the east, U.S. Highway 183 on the south and southwest, MoPac Expressway on the west and Braker Lane to the northwest. The area includes the high-profile, mixed-use Domain development as well as the Gateway Shopping Center west of MoPac and the J.J. Pickle Research Campus.
We started this as a neighborhood planning process a few years ago, says Molly Scarbrough, senior planner in the Neighborhood Planning and Zoning department. But with the advent of The Domain--the first phase of which opened earlier this month--and the approaching commuter rail line that will have a stop near Braker Lane, city planners realized there was an opportunity to do a more aggressive land-use study addressing everything from transportation issues to density allowances.
The idea was to see if we could make it all work as a mixed-use neighborhood, urban environment to capture some of the significant growth that is coming to Central Texas, Scarbrough says.
Currently there are no single-family homes within the master plan zone, only a handful of apartment complexes that total around 1,500 units. But Scarbrough says the area could become a center of mixed-use projects, somewhat like downtowns 2nd Street District, with retail and commercial uses below multifamily condo and apartment units. Further, she says, developers who want to construct taller buildings could get seek Public Benefit Density Bonuses that would make allowances up to 30 stories in an area near the rail lines in return for developers contributing to projects like park space or storm water management.
The plan identifies a number of properties, like the 320-acre Domain and a vacant tract across Burnet Road owned by IBM, as catalyst sites that will steer other development. The plan also calls for an expanded network of streets to improve mobility and access in the area, including redesigning Burnet Road as a north-south thoroughfare connecting U.S. 183 and MoPac. The plan will be presented at a public meeting on March 24, at 9 a.m. at the Austin Community College Northridge Campus Building 4000. Scarbrough says some minor changes could be made after that meeting before the plan goes before the Planning Commission and eventually City Council for adoption sometime later this spring or summer. If the plan is approved, a zoning overlay district would be established in the study area to facilitate the uses prescribed in the plan with new development.