Travis County Commissioners Court
March 25, 2008
Item 21
Item number 21 to receive presentation on viscaya, proposed development project in precinct 3. I do apologize for reaching this item later than anticipated. It's just that when you are sort of guessing how much the items will take, you never know whether one person will show up or several.
>> thank you, judge, commissionrs court. I’ll go ahead and start while they are setting up here behind me. Thank you for allowing us to make a presentation to you. We'll try to keep it relatively brief. Vizcayan is a unique project in a couple of different respects. It's actually quite unbelievable project. It's a thousand acres on Lake Travis. The density is approximately one unit per two acres so relatively low density project. In anticipate of that, however, the developers have gone to great lengths to address water quality using national experts, local experts, over the last sick months with lcra on an overall water quality plan so that at the end of the day they can account for every drop of water that falls on the project in terms of its impact and water quality aspects. The other thing a little bit unique about this project is just the process by which we've gone from the very beginning. The developers electioned to be very open, reach out to the community. We've had numerous meetings, one--one meetings with individuals in western Travis County. Last fall we had a public meeting at the city hall in bee cave with about 50 people attending, raining from community groups to just individuals. Honestly, in my 30 years-plus doing this kind of work, it's the only time at the end of the presentation we got a round of applause for the development. So this is a development that hopefully will kind of raise the bar a little bit in western Travis County for how development should occur. I’d like to introduce paul faye with Austin haneyy to give a brief introduction and then to mark meier to talk about the project.
>> for the clerk, that was mr. David umbrust, prominent Austin Travis County resident.
>> thank you, judge.
>> sorry to cut you off there.
>> exister--Commissioners, thank you. My name is paul faye and I’m the ceo and chairman of the corp rangs, the developer of vizcaya. We are from san francisco, caz. I’d like to first of all say thank you for your time to let us come and explain our project to you, which we are extremely committed about. I have been told that I am not allowed to talk very as long as, so I will make this as short as possible. I think the best way to start would be to explain a little bit of the company's history. We were formed in 1898. It's been around for quite a while. We have four projects up there that we would sort of, a little bit representative of the projects that we have done over the past 20 years. The first one here is called three creek ranch which is in jackson hole, wyoming, a 710 waker community. It has a golf course, a fabulous site with three creeks running through where you can catch trout daily. Quite a special place. The second one called astansia, my company the developer of that back in the mid '90s, and that is a community of approximately 280 homes. It was ranched the number one golf community in arizona important many, many years. I think now it's number two. The third project there is called paloa beach in hawaii on the big island. A small community, 50 lots right on the ocean really quite spectacular. The fourth one is called the mona caia, probably the beginning of modern day resorts, a joint venture between the company and laurence rockefeller and the first resort that laurence rockefeller did and really set the tone for a project that had a gentle touch on the land. So what we pride ourselves on is that we do go month communities and we like to meet the different community leaders and the folks who are our neighbors and try to do a project that will be please to go all and people can get excited about. My time is up. I’m not allowed to talk anymore. Mark meier here, who is a vice-president of the company but also a partner in this project and he will explain it to you soup to nutshopefully. Mark, go ahead.
>> thank you, paul. I’m mark meier, vice-president. I have two small children so I will buck the trend today and motor announce my retirement and talk to you guys about what we're up to out here. If I could stand it would be.
>> pop that over.
>> for those of you who aren't familiar with where the site is, we have a little context map here. This is highway 71 coming out west. The town of bee cave is down here. Lakeway is in this area right here. Our site is 1050 acres show in the blue outline. We have human rouse access points the into the property. Primary is ro drive and eethat come off highway 71. A little closer zoom in on that . . . You can see we have the bulk of the anchorage sits --acrage sits above the lake and a piece goes down and accesses Lake Travis County with lage frontage. Here is where bee creek roads come in, a couple smaller --subdivisions down the road, siesta shores and bringer cliff which you may be familiar with further to the west. A little bit of an introduction of how we view the property when we came on and went through the design process and coming up with the plan that we submitted to the county and then running through the plan a little bit. We came in and did a number of analyses of the slope and elevations on the property. What you can see here. What they have is a gradual rise to the back of the property and a number of ridges running across the prompt. So we have high land going down to low land across. Typical of the hill country, it's sort of a stairstep topography. This is a slope map showing the steeper slopes and dark colors and flatter areas in light colors. We spent a lot of time on the property with the land planners and engineers and various folks to figure out the attributes of this property making it special, the things we want to make sure that we maintain going forward on this. One of the big features of that was to use the topography as it sits, to build a community that fits right into that topography and the tree cover and the natural vegetation sitting out there. Doing that really minimize the amount of dirt that we have to move, the disturbance to the environment in generally. Once we had done that work we also then spent a lot of time in this community, in western Travis County and other similar areas, taking a look at what are sort of the things that we want to promote and enhance about the hill country environment that we have out here. I’ve got a few slides here and either in your packet that show the character of what we are trying to crea out there. The big theme for us is to, georgeyput a couple other up. The real theme is to enhance what is special about the hill country and not go out and move a bunch of dirt and tear down the existing fole yadge to create something mu that doesn't fit. We visited a number of communities and learned about the vegetation and spent quite a bit of time with folks from the county and from lcra learning about the right plants to use in the area so that we have something that not only will be vibrant and healthy over time but also water conscious, which we know is an important thing in the area right now. We've recently actually met, we have a well water counsel track with lcra to provide for both smaland irrigation water in the community and we recently amended the contract to include quite quite a few conservation measures about developing the lots and common spaces and what we will do to make sure we are a water responsible community. I would like to talk a couple minutes about the plan as it sits. We have 1050 acres. We have 496 lots planned on this property. We have basically two categories of home sites planned. We have estate home sites which range from about an acre and a half out to about four and a half acres. Those are shown in, you see the clearings for the home sites in those in the lighter color on this plan. That makes up about 60 percent of the lots. About 40 percent of the lots are more clustered product where they average about two per acre in those areas where we have clustered those in. It's designed, they are all freestanding units designed tor lower maintenance to take advantage of areas where the topography allows for clustering and a nice landscape them running through and minimizing the amount of disturbance to the land needed to create those things. Talk to this diagram a little bit. One of the things going on on this property over the years is a fair amount of cattle grazing. So there were some areas where a tre million douse --tremendous amount of property has great tree cover and hard woods. Some part are denuded from cattle grazing taken place over time. In those areas we talk about another one of the things on this property, 18-hole golf course. The core area where the most golf is laid out is also the area where we have the most cattle grazing has gone onco, the least amount of vegetation in that area. So it's really, we've designed in it a way to make it a restorative program out there. There are a number of dry washes running through the low parts of the property and those are the areas where drainage comes down when there are stormwater events. We obviously heard a lot about what's gone on in Travis County over the past few years with unfortunate stormwater events where folks didn't do a great job of protecting against runoff. We've made that a real focus of our entire design both from the long-term plan of how we're going to treat the treatment of the golf course, lad scaping of the homes, and also the short-term during construction, guaranteeing that there's not going to be silt conveyed down the property when there are various stormwater events. So we've concentrated a lot of the golf into the areas that have been most denuded and we're excited about the restoration that's going to go on in those areas. We've kept the golf course to the maximum extent possible away from the creeks buffers and we've also put a tremendous amount of additional buffer zone around the golf course. The areas where you see lots, the home sites are set up and away from the lower areas where the golf course and the water is, with usually at least a couple hundred feet of separation and about 30-40 feet of elevation change between the two. So the golf and the large stands of trees, then there's homes up above that so we create the really great open space feel that we think is what's really special about the hill country and what makes this community very special. Part of that plan is the treatment of individual lots. When you have for example, what you see here is a typical lot about an acrer and a half. A big part of our plan is defining very tightly construction envelopes, budding envelopes--building envelopes and further landscaping envelope and maintaining a very large amount of the lot in native landscaping, maintaining the trees that exist there, staying away nrfrom the steep shelves, siting the houses on the flatter ground and maintaining the shelf that carries a lot of the hill country vegetation, a lot of the trees sort of work into where the benches fall off. It provides two things. A very nice aesthetic for what we are trying to accomplish, which is homes tucked back into the trees with good separation between the sites, and also from the environmental side a good protection of a lot of filtering of stormwater from the community. Works its way through the natural filtering of the native vegetation out there. The restricted areas will be either left in the condition they are in right now or in areas where they have been denudded by cattle grazing enhanced with native vegetation appropriate for long-term sustainable vegetation in the area. Typical treatment also in the villa lot areas where each home site is carefully placed and we are able to maintain the bulk of the natural vegetation and run that right on through the clustered communities. We really keep the feeling of we're in the hill country, not doing sort of an urban development out here. Also minimizes the amount of disturbed area exposed while we are in construction and minimizes the imper viouk cover, around 10.8 percent. We're well below 15. We excited about that. We understand that's a big deal around here. We have had, in all these things that I’m discussing, we've had pretty extensive conversations with both lcra and the county. We've actually gotten our lcra approval under the watershed ordinance recently and they have done pretty expense extensive evaluation of both our design of the community, the design of our management plan for our golf course in the long term. We have a national firm who specializes in environmentally sensitive areas to put together a management plan that sort of goes above and beyond what the regulations call for with regard to how we are going to handle the golf course drainage. One other thing I think I forgot to mens earlier that is pointed out on this diagram that we are looking at, another exciting part of the community is the trail system running throughout. We think a big part of what's exciting about the hill country is getting out and enjoying the outdoors. It's pretty cool. I spent a tremendous amount of time on the property over the past two years and I’ve walked a lot of areas where we are putting the trails through. It's a really cool thing and helps fit into what we think the hill country is all about, getting outside and hiking and biking. Let's move down to the water. With the large 1050 project and a relatively smaller area down by the water, we made the decision rather than cut this area up down here like done in various places around us and sell lots around the water, we are creating a place for the entire community to get down to Lake Travis and enjoy it. We have designed a couple of the golf holes down close to the lake and then our main community clubhouse which will be, I’ll show you some pictures of what we are doing there, but we really designed here a cluster of build thags will feel like sort of a little village on the hill down by the water. It connects to community marina that we planned and then we have swimming pool, sort of a family zone set up to be a really cool place to come down with the kids, go to the pool, get in the lake, that sort of thing. Nice formal dining facilities. All the workout facilities and various things associated with a nice private club community like we're creating here. In order to, one of the things that is sort of unique out here from what we've seen on the lake, as you know, Lake Travis goes up and down. In a lot of the communities that we've looked at where they have a marinan and the lake goes up and down, the marinan is sort of following the shoreline out and you're having to push it around and figure out how to make it all work when the water goes down. We have come up with a different approach and design. Our intention is to excavate a fair amount of material from this area so that we can create an area where the marina can sit and just go up and down as the lake goes up and down, not be pushed out into the lake channel, not become an eye sorry for the community or the neighbors when things start getting jugled all around then we are going to take the dirt that's excavated and use that to bring up the elevation of the clubhouse facility to get up above the floodplain in a way that looks very natural and ties back into the rest of the land as you work your way down. Got some renderings of sort of what that clubhouse facility is going to look like. We think it's going to be a really cool sort of iconic piece on the lake. Again it's not a monolithic clubhouse, not a big huge structure drawing attention to itself, but creating a little village out on the hill very well land escaped with the same sort of trees and so forth that you see in the surrounding property, so that it sits very nicely into the lake, fit into the context of the other things that you see down there, and creates a really cool place for us to get down and enjoy Lake Travis. I’ve got one more little picture that shows the general design of what we are doing down there, the cluster of buildings, a nice open piazza looking out toward the water. Sort of doing things to break up the big mass of things, minimize the imper vious cover, opportunities to control water in the area and so forth and still having something that's a really cool connection down to Lake Travis. I think that's pretty much all I’ve got.
>> you said it was 10 point?
>> ten.8 percent.
>> Commissioners, we're not asking for any action today. As I said, our intention has been a very open reach out to the community. Our goal really is when we come back here for approval, which will hopefully be very soon, that it would be on consent or really a nonevent. Certainly we welcome your questions.
>> I had two quick questions. Looks like a beautiful place to live. Quite beautiful. Will there be any, for the closest developments around you will there be any connecting streets?
>> the street that folks use to access siesta shores in this area is siesta shores drive. This is becreek road as you come--creek road in this way here.
>> right.
>> folks come down siesta shores drive to access the community here. Our plan is to have two bridges that go over siesta shores drive so that the internal traffic, the main entrance is the at the high point of the property. We want the internal traffic to the community to go over see estake shorse drive. It's sort of a roller coaster going through there. The idea is to knock that down and flatten out the grade a little bit of siesta shores drive and run a bridge essentially at the existing nad recall grade across present one side of the property to the other to minimize the interaction of traffic and so forth for the folks that are further down the road here.
>> will it really create that much more traffic that the traffic needs to be separated?
>> to answer, no. Here is what we are trying to do. The people at siesta shorse will not have any impact. Hardly any impacts at all with our community being sold out completely and lived in because when they go to their client, had they won't interact with the folks in our community.
>> is your community a gated community for which they won't have access?
>> yes. Yes.
>> I see.
>> what is project ion for second, third home versus residential?
>> we believe this will be at minimum probably 60 percent second homes. It could be more. We plan to market this, obviously, to everybody here in Austin community and Lake Travis but also we plan to market it nationally so that folks will come here. As you know there is a lot of ut graduates that would love to come back in the retirement years and to be near the campus that they love and maybe take a course or two or whatever and go to the football and basketball games, et cetera, but have a place that they can wreck --recreate. That's part of the intent. Obviously we will take, whoever wants to buy we'll be happy to have them. We plan this would be more of a second home type community.
>> any other questions? You think we'll see this again when?
>> hopefully in the next month or so.
>> okay. Anybody else here on this item who would like to come and give comments? Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> thanks for your patience too. Number 26 is to consider and take appropriate action on the following request regarding rocky creek ranch preliminary plan. A subdivision in precinct 3. A is revised preliminary plan 414 total acres. B, amended and restated phasing agreement between Travis County and the developer, kirby development limited or ll c. C, indemnification agreement with cd rocky creek lp to fund the turn lane improvements on fm 3238, hamilton pool road at rocky creek boulevard. D, construction and maintenance agreement between the state of Texas and Travis County for turn the lane improvements within the right-of-way of fm 3238 hamilton pool road e, use of alternative fiscal for rocky creek ranch section one and, f, use of two catch security agreements for rocky creek ranch section one and bound dear street improvements to the fm 3238.
>> anna bowlen, Travis County tn r. A lot of work has gone into this agenda request and the project in generally. The original preliminary plan was approved in 2004. There was one lot that was approved fiscal in 2006 of that original limb. What--prelim. What you have before you is the original plan revise the 2004 prelim. One of the significant changes is the new plan goes from 468 residential lots to 395. That 39 a 5 number was negotiated--395 null was a negotiated number. The developer and the neighbors had reached an agreement on several items that were out there from the if first prel I m. Another pretty significant change from the original prel istm in the revised prelim is that the spine street that guess through the property, rocky creek boulevard, will still be public but the pods off that spine streedstreet will be private. Those were the mine changes between the original prelim and the revised. The phasing agreement, when we first did the 2004 prelim plan we entered into a phrasing agreement. The phasing agreement is being amended today. The ownership of the property hats changed from what was in the the original agreement. The original agreement come contemplated advanced funding agreement with tex dot for turn lanes. Instead of using advanced funding agreement the developer is going to use a construction maintenance agreement they worked out with tex dot. Those are the main changes to the phasing agreement. This is the first time we've used a construction maintenance agreement with tex dot. The norm previously had been advanced funding. Tex do the doesn't take money directly from the developer but instead require that fiscal improvements on tex dot right-of-way be paid to the county and the county transfers that over to tex dot with tex dot having the spilled to--responsibility to do the improvements. In this case this construction maintenance agreement, same as with advanced funding agreements, the developer and their engineers work with tex do the on --dot on getting con send sunce on the right-of-way. In this case tex dot does the look to the county to enter into advanced funding agreement. This construction maintenance agreement allows the county to build the improvement. We don't have to have money thanks --that is transferred to tex dot. At the end they get an as built. The dem--indemnification agreement in this case mirrors the responsibilities and liabilities that the county is picking up in the makemaintenance agreement back to the developer so they are able to build the turn lanes on the road and cord nade with tex dot. So this is the first time we have done one of these. It's pretty, I think, pretty cool. Hopefully this may be another alternative that we have for improvements that will be going in on tex dot right-of-way.
>> who will construct the improvement?
>> the developer.
>> who will pay for that improvement?
>> the developer.
>> so Travis County does not advance funding.
>> right. This is an alternative to the traditional advanced funding agreement.
>> okay.
>> the next part of this agenda request is an alternative fiscal request for the section one final plat. The prelim is going to be done in phases and this this is just for the first phase for them to build the infrastructure. When they are ready to record the plat they will come back for approval. This is no different than any other alt fiscal request on the agenda routinely. Then the last part is the cash security agreement. One of the cash security agreements goes for the alternative fiscal in section one. The other cash security agreement with, we wanted to have revegetation, we the county, tnr, for the improvements in the tex dot right-of-way. In case anything were to go wrong we would be able to restore the right-of-way to its current natural condition. That is something that we felt would be appropriate and that's what I think there's like 29,653.32 for reveg and restoration in the event we need that.
>> question about the maintenance agreement, if you don't mind. Who is responsible for ensuring, after the work has been done, to go and inspect? We still have that responsibility?
>> are you talking about on the tex dot right-of-way?
>> yes, who actually has the physical responsibility to make sure that all the I’s have been dotted and t's crossed?
>> tex dot will be inspecting in the right-of-way. We certainly have the ability to go and look as well but tex dot has the responsibility.
>> they have the final authority to say this is a-okay and stuff like that, whereas we, anyway, so they end up doing it. That's what you, tex dot.
>> certainly. Improvements in their right-of-way, they are going to want the final word on that. So absolutely.
>> I understand. Okay.
>> I have talked with tex do the about this to be sure that, young--you know, they are comfortable with this. They have used a similar model elsewhere in the state. It's the first one in the area.
>> here in Travis County.
>> right. I’ve worked with them as has the developer and the engineer. So the precoordination has been very much the same between the developer and tex do the about the design design of whatever is going to go into tex dot right-of-way. In this case turn lane.
>> yes.
>> that part is the same whether or not it's an advanced funding agreement or construction maintenance.
>> they have the final say.
>> absolutely.
>> okey doke.
>> a difference between retirement and termination, right? Somebody working on term mation, not retirement. The note here says that our optimistic staff briefs the developer and residents have gotten together and reached agreement.
>> that's my an understanding.
>> residents here on this item, please come forward. Is there a representative here from the developer? Good morning.
>> good morning, I’m gene lowen thal, I live next-door to the proposed develop. When kirby development acquired the project from rebecca hudson, shortly thereafter the kirby team the reached out to the neighbors and started dialogue. Anna was helpful in getting that started as the county, very help with this. Kirby listened very well and ultimately incorporated many of our concerns in the project design, everything from dark skies to buffers to reducing the number of lots. Perhaps most importantly taking measures to minimize the impact on rocky creek. Just want to say it's been a very helpful process, very good process, one that should probably take place much more often than we see between developers and the surrounding property owners. So thank you.
>> thanks for all your work.
>> thank you for your support.
>> I didn't mean to pessimistic. I am is bit surprised by those remarks but happy also.
>> in the beginning--
>> I recall. Any comments from the applicant?
>> I don't have anything to add. It's been a pleasure really working with the neighbors out we had some differences to work out but it's a long process and we got through it and it's all going well.
>> judge, I move approval a through f.
>> second.
>> when all said and done, the only difference here really is method of financing of the infrastructure improvement. We think it's an improvement upon what we've done historically.
>> that's the most significant change. The prelim is being revised but to me the most significant change in this agenda request is that alternative for advance funding agreements.
>> okay.
>> does that speed up the process? In other words without having to go through reimbursement, advance refunding agreement as we have done stuff in the past and that we still do things currently with this type of if new arrangement as far as the contractual maintenance agreement, is that--
>> I think it definitely has the --capacity to speed it up. Now it's in the engineer's ballpark to do the improvements. I think that has, it's very possible that it might speed some of that up.
>> I’d like to see the advantages. Merds, if --in other words, things in the future.
>> thanks for your innovation and the applicant's on coming up with this out-of-the-box solution.
>> just for the record, the applicant had most of this worked out before they called me.
>> very generous of you to say.
>> thanks to everybody.
>> you will learn to take a little more credit, ms. Bowlen. All in favor. That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
>> that was for a, b, c d, e and f.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 8:51 PM