Travis County Commissioners Court
August 10, 2004
Item 18
18 consider and take appropriate action on application to the Texas racing commission for change in racetrack location by the Austin jockey club, ltd, in precinct 2, after 18 we will try to get in 19 and another item. 30, hopefully before 12:00 noon.
>> as everybody is kind of coming and gathering, when we originally placed this open on the agenda last week, if you saw me running in and out of executive session last week it was because of this item. We thought there was an emergency, we thought that there was haste because it looked like there was going to be a pending application at the Texas racing commission to lock in on a location for the Austin jockey club. And that that indeed would occur two days from now. We have since very rapidly gotten a whole lot of folks together to visit, because our concern was that in that application there was a lot of missing information. And that the -- that the racing commission, especially on the things that are important to Travis County of -- of traffic, traffic, traffic, traffic, traffic and traffic, and the upgrade of pecan, certainly we are a stakeholder having next door the -- the Travis County northeast metro park. None of these things were mentioned. So the kinds of things that the county, because this is located in the unincorporated would comment on if this went through the development process seemed to be lacking in the application. We have since gotten together a meeting with the applicant, the landowner, and -- I think we have got everybody's attention in terms of having good discussions to begin and in fact I believe mr. Brown is here to tell us that the application is being pulled down, it will be amended so that by the time it goes back to the racing commission, we hope it will be a full and complete application to go to them. I will kind of leave it to joe as to what we need to do today, but we really want to make sure that the public got a sense that we know, are aware, trying to get the appropriate people together to have some good, hearty conversations.
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> we need to try the other mic next to carol, please.
>> does that make a difference?
>> how is this? All right. Thank you. We have been meeting with the applicant because at some point this will be a subdivision of land, they will need to submit a plat for the site plan and those are the type of comments that we are currently previewing with them, expect to do more discussion, but I think at this point, really it's just laying out the process of how this license before the Texas racing commission will be dealt with and what is the process from here.
>> okay.
>> good morning. I’m brian brown, the c.e.o. At retama park, also the vice-president of Austin racing partners, which is the general partner of the Austin jockey club. In 1999 the Austin jockey club purchased a class 2 racing license and submitted a request to the racing commission, both to approve the ownership change of that license and also to -- to relocate that license from round mountain, Texas, to a location right off of riverside drive near 71. The racing commission approved both the ownership change and the location change to the location on riverside in February of 2000. At that point, we began our permitting efforts to try to permit the site through the city of Austin. We met a -- we met very stiff opposition from neighborhood groups. We also met some resistance from the city who had -- who had eyed the site as a location for potential low income housing. And at that point you may remember the city was going through some -- some land use proposals for that particular area. And a horse racetrack was not in that particular set of plans. So we kind of abandoned the efforts in 2001 to permit that site and started looking for -- for other places to go. We have literally looked everywhere in Travis County. We are -- we are -- in our opinion, pretty much limited to Travis County for a lot of reasons. By law, as we did moving from round mountain to Travis County, we couldn't move to another area, but -- we could move to another area, but we are very set on the Austin area so we have focused on Travis County. As you all can well imagine, west of i-35 is not really feasible for a racetrack for a lot of reasons. There's not much land available west of 35, there's also the terrain, which -- which is a big problem when you get very far west of i-35. So we started to focus on the Pflugerville area. I want to say about a year ago. It seemed with some of the designations for the entertainment district areas that the -- that the city council of Pflugerville was looking at and has since adopted, and -- and just the availability of land that that area might be the best place for us to look. We specifically focused on the site that we are now under contract to purchase. About a year ago. It -- it took us quite a while to get the attention of mr. Timberman, the land owner is wanting to have this site be develop into a horse racetrack, we are finally able to do that and went under contract to purchase the property June 29th, so just a little over a month ago. The process we go through with the racing commission is compared to the process that we'll go through with the county and the city, is pretty simple. We have to -- we have to satisfy some criteria and the -- in the racing act and the rules of the commission, which basically deal with the public interest. And very specifically, in large part, the interest of the horse racing community. The racing commission is obviously more interested in how a new racetrack or a racetrack location would fit the need of racing in Texas. So they look very hard at what this facility would do for -- for horse racing interests. We -- we put together a -- a package, which I think you have as part of your materials, to go to the racing commission and to be on their agenda for this coming Thursday. Having met with -- with some of your county staff, mr. Gieselman and others, it's clear that it's -- I think in all our best interests for us to focus, as Commissioner Sonleitner had said, on some of the -- particularly the traffic issues, but a variety of other issues dealing with this site. Get some things I think more straight within our package. And in that way when we to go the racing commission at a later date, we have I think a better set of plan that's more accurately reflect what can happen, what reality would say. So it's our plan, we have officially withdrawn our desire to be on the agenda for the racing commission meeting on Thursday, so the racing commission will not discuss our issue, location change. In all likelihood the rating commission will meet again in October. Could be September, but more likely October. They will set that meeting date on Thursday. That gives us a good couple of months to meet with city, county officials. And to talk, particularly about transportation, but again about a variety of other issues. Our site and our use would impact -- so we are here to -- to answer questions. Mr. Paul linehan with land strategies is here to discuss more about the site and our plans for it, again we will be happy to answer any questions that the commission asks.
>> it's my understanding this is going to be on the city of Pflugerville's agenda tonight as an agenda item, they will begin to have discussions in public about this process, involving their community members as well. When I talked to the mayor, it's not going to be a work session setting, they have work sessions for tonight, but it will be an agenda item tonight, I think this will trigger much more discussion in your community. Mr. Brown, if you have not met yet, we would like for you to encourage you to meet chief Ron mullenberg from esd number 2, this also will go under esd number two jurisdiction related to an inspection of all the plans, they will certainly want to have some good discussions with you about water pressure being in the manvel ccn. We want to encourage you guys to also get going. I don't want to take up too much of the court's time today, because like I said we thought we were going to have to very quickly throw in some comments to get to the rating commission for Thursday. That is no longer the case. But we did want to get it out in public that this indeed is coming along, staff is appropriately meeting with mr. Brown and mr. Linehan and others related to the county's issues and certainly the opportunities will be there for mr. Brown and his investors to begin discussions appropriately with Pflugerville and the esd number 2 and anybody else that wants to weigh in on this. So, joe, we don't really need to take any action on this. We just want to kind of get it out there in the record, have folks meet each other. To assure everybody that the emergency that we saw last week, we now have our county staff actively meeting with mr. Brown to start talking. One of the issue that's we know is going to have to be discussed, because this is coming through as a subdivision, there will be fiscal and right-of-way requirements related to any boundary streets with this subdivision. So that's something that I think those discussions have begun and just so everybody knows what it takes to get through the subdivision process.
>> you mean, what happened to smarty jones? [laughter]
>> smarty jones owes me $50. I did want to point out at retama we have immediately add just sent to us, because I know these will be issues, of a catholic church and school, immediately boundary on our property, a softball field and a cemetery. No complaints from anybody at the cemetery to this day.
>> those are voters in duval county. Also we wanted to make sure that they were aware of information that we just got last week from lone star infrastructure, the builders of s.h. 130, there will need to be to the east of us on pecan and cameron some closures of those roads with some pretty major detours for about a year related to the construction of the interchanges on 130. We wanted to make sure that information as well was passed on to mr. Brown. I have forwarded that to to mayorcal land up in flying -- mayor callan up in Pflugerville as well.
>> would anybody else like to address the court on this item today? We will see you in the future.
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Last Modified:
Friday, October 28, 2005 9:12 AM