Travis County Commissioners Court
July 28, 2009,
Item 25
Now, we indicated our intention to call up 25 at 10:30.
it is to receive presentation from city of Austin on the waller creek tunnel project.
my intention is to call up -- we have the person here on the hot dog stand?
okay.
we'll call up that item after this one, okay?
welcome to Travis County, city of Austin reps.
>> well, thank you.
my name is joe
>> [inaudible] deputy direct information the watershed department city of Austin.
joining me is leslie browder, the city's chief financial officer and thank you for having us here today to give you the update on the waller creek project.
>> just for the record, we've approved that $66,000 project.
>> we can make this short then.
>> if that will help the presentation.
>> thank you.
>> yes, thank you.
a little bit of history, Travis County approved their participation in the waller creek project in March of 2007.
later that summer the city and county signed an interlocal agreement and the t.i.f.
district was created.
design activities actually began late in 2007, early 2008.
but during that same time frame there were two entities that were created, a t.i.f.
board to provide oversight over the t.i.f.
district and then a waller creek citizens advisory committee.
and the county has a representative on each of those groups, the t.i.f.
board and the citizens committee.
the citizens committee gets a month update generally on the second or third Thursday of the month.
so what I would like to do is briefly review the scope of the projects.
remind you what we're doing as far as the tunnel and the associated benefits.
and then really get into the details on what we've done today in terms of items completed and underway, touch a little bit on the design status and schedule and financial management.
the tunnel will start in waterloo park just north of 12th street, west of red river in waterloo park.
that's essentially where the water will go into the tunnel and underground 60 to 70 feet and flow lower downtown and discharge out at lady bird lake at the outlet structure.
the majority of the alignment is along sabine street which greatly reduced the number of needed easements and what have you for the project.
the tunnel will be anywhere from 20 to 26 feet in diameter as it gets larger as it continues to go down towards the lake.
i mentioned that there will be surface improvements at waterloo park for construction of the inlet.
there will also be surface improvements at the outlet at waller beach to make way for the tunnel outlet.
there will also be two creekside inlets, one between fourth and fifth street and another between eighth and ninth street.
these inlets are much smaller and they take the water that falls blow 12th street and flows to the creek.
they will take that water out of the creek and down into the tunnel again providing some additional floods safety protection for those areas.
because the majority of the large structures that we're building are in parkland, we are also required to do parkland mitigation.
after the project is complete, we expect over one million square feet of land to be reclaimed from the flood plain.
more than 28 acres.
along with that 42 commercial and residential structures and 12 roadways will be protected from the 100-year flood plain.
so again, just a substantial amount of flood protection in lower downtown Austin along lower waller creek.
so in addition to the reduced risk of severe flooding and reduction in the flood safety threat for our citizens, we'll also see a very significant reduction in the erosive flows, the amount of erosion that occurs and really damages the stream banks along lower waller creek.
if any of you have ever walked lower waller creek, you can see the sheer bluffs of clay and the amount of damage that has occurred both to private property and also the city's trail system there.
so a lot of the public amenities have been washed away literally by floods.
the amount of trash and debris will be substantially reduce understand waller creek given all of the flood waters above 12th street will go into the inlet and screened before going into the tunnel.
there will be a major trash and debris mechanical screening system that will have to be manned during a large storm.
but once that water then flows into the town lake and lady bird lake the a trash and debris currently being deposited into lady bird lake will be greatly diminished.
there will be a couple of small pumps that will take water out of the tunnel and bring it into the creek.
so year round we will have water flowing along waller creek.
we won't get any of those summer stagnant pools that can create an unsightly and smelly mess from time to time.
so we will have constant flowing water year round in the creek.
finally I think there's knowledge certainly future opportunities for redevelopment and additional public amenities now that you've taken away the danger of the flooding in the flood plain.
this is a cross-section of the waller creek tunnel.
the majority of the tunnel will be submerged.
in fact, the lady bird lake water surface elevations kind of flow back into the tunnel.
and that makes it possible for water to be pumped out at waterloo park into the creek.
water will be during a flood water will come in and go down into the tunnel and push water out the end of the tunnel at lady bird lake.
again, you can see the two smaller side inlets in the middle there.
you can also see how the tunnel goes from about 20 feet near the 12th street area to 22 feet and finally to 26 feet as it reaches its terminus at lady bird lake.
project design activities begun gain in late 2007 and early 2008 and there was a significantment of data collection required in terms of project area surveying and geotechnical investigations.
the project area along the route of the tunnel throughout waterloo park, the outlet at lady bird lake, all that was surveyed as well as geotechnical borings taken along the path ott tunnel.
this is a photo in a barge in lady bird leak to help with the geotechnical design of the outlet.
additional flood -- I'm sorry, additional sign activities that have taken place, hydraulic and hydraulic modeling has been occurring on the project, land acquisition.
we've been working on over 50 different pieces of property to get either permanent, temporary or subterrainian easements on those properties so our real estate services department has been very busy coordinating with those landowners to acquire that land to make way for the project.
a substantial amount of permitting is required for a project of this magnitude.
i'm going to go into a little more detail in the next slide on that.
finally the construction drawings and manuals are being prepared as we speak.
permitting.
the fema flood plain map approval process is certainly a lengthy one, but I'm very proud to say that we have received approval for what's called a conditional letter of map revision for this project, which means we have given fema the models that they need to see the effect the tunnel will have once constructed.
with their approval now, the only thing that's left to do is to build the tunnel and then submit the final models with the as-built construction drawings so they can see that yes, we did construct the tunnel and now let's develop the map that shows the reduced flood plain.
whereas before the flood plain was upwards of 800 feet wide in some locations in downtown, all that water now will be within the banks of waller creek and that's the map that will come out after the tunnel is completed.
so that wouldn't be called a conditional letter map revision that is correct would actually be the letter of map revision which would lead to redrawing of flood plain maps in lower waller creek.
we've also been working with the corps of engineers, the permit, any type of dredging and filling in the u.s.
you deal with the corps.
we've been working with the Texas parks and wildlife department primarily on something called federal -- lcra with water rights at -- and the recirculation water that will be taken out of the tunnel to create that constant base flow for water quality purposes.
we have also received a tceq storm water discharge permit and actually this is a city-wide permit, a system-wide permit and we're able to roll that and we have done that.
finally as each of these constructions drawings are completed, a site plan application will be submitted with the city and this will go through city of Austin review through the site plan process.
and then finally, in terms of the project design status, the tunnel project is 60% designed.
we actually received the design drawings and manuals just last week for city staff review and that was on schedule.
the inlet at waterloo park is about 30% signed.
and that's on schedule.
then the outlet and the h-3 inlet which are going to be constructed near the end of the project, they are about 20 to 25% complete which is slightly ahead of schedule but for the most part we are on schedule in terms of developing that documentation.
i'll turn it over to leslie to talk with some of the t.i.f.
items.
>> thanks, joe.
this next slide is a summary for you of information that you are probably already very familiar with.
just a bit of a background information related to the tax increment financing zone.
it was created in June of 2007 and under our agreement with the county will be in place for 20 years.
under the terms of that agreement, the city will contribute 100% of our tax increment with Travis County contributing 50%.
we do plan to issue debt to finance the design and construction of the tunnel to be reimbursed through the proceeds of the t.i.f.
and we will be issuing certificates of obligation for that consistent with our agreement with the county and those proceeds are also expected to cover the cost of operations and maintenance for the tunnel.
this next page just includes some key terms from the t.i.f.
agreement that we have with you.
the city and the county both deposit annually into the t.i.f.
fund that is typically due on may the 1st.
the county provides us with a preliminary estimate of captured appraised value.
this is basically the estimated growth in the t.i.f.
each year and that is due annually by may 31st.
we typically work with leroy nellis and the Travis County appraisal district on these two items.
and then paid on the ---based at the latest estimates at that time point in time these slides were prepared that we got from tcad, an estimated assessed value increment for tax year 2009 which payment would be occurring next fiscal year was $148 million.
you a all's would be lower based on your homestead exemption primarily.
and the original amount that was estimated in the original projections was 102 million.
could you flip to the next.
and then this is the last slide.
we are planning prior to going to construction, joe's group is working on a construction cost estimate.
currently we are looking at doing a revenue update in the fall combined with an economic analysis as well.
those will really be hand in hand with each other, and then joe can speak a little bit about the value engineering process.
>> yes, and on value engineering, of course what that is we'll have a separate consultant, a third party come in to look at the designs of the current consultant and make cost reduction recommendations in order to still achieve the same level of benefit from those projects.
so it's, again, a third party come in and just a separate set of eyes of looking at the way the project is designed and to identify any means to reduce and add -- reduce the cost of the projects and still maintain the same level of value in terms of flood control.
>> and leroy nellis serves on the t.i.f.
board so we will always keep him up to date on what's going on with the project and if you have any questions, please feel free to funnel those through him and we'll get you any information that you need.
>> so who's the county representative on the citizen advisory committee?
>> go ahead.
>> jean mather was appointed by the county.
>> okay.
and remind me who the design consultant is.
>> it's a joint venture led by espey consulting.
>> espey and?
>> kbr.
kellogg, brown and root.
>> questions?
have you had to issue any debt thus far?
>> no, we have not.
we are funding design with -- well, actually it was debt that was previously issued for waller creek back in 1999.
>> okay.
this started out as a flood and erosion control project, I guess back in '98 and '99 when voters approved that.
was there a time, though, before '99 when there was major development along waller creek?
i know in the '80s and '90s it was seen as a sort of negative and with flood erosion control problems.
>> there has not been a lot of significant redevelopment within that corridor simply because of the flood plain.
the city flood plain rules really prevent significant development or even new development within the flood plain unless they go through fairly drastic measures.
as you walk up and down the creek you can see a lot of very underutilized property from cesar chavez and up towards fifth street.
>> does this tunnel start at fifth street or erwin center is this.
>> 12th and red river.
that would be the southern end of waterloo park.
>> okay.
my final question is if you look at the tunnel, it's kind of going down, down and down, but the outlet goes up.
so I guess there's a pump there when we want to get the water out of the tunnel into the lake?
>> actually the way the hydraulics work, the tunnel does go down but because of differences in elevation the amount of flood water that comes in at waterloo park is at such a high elevation it pushes that water out of the outlet so there are no pumps needed at all.
in fact, the only time we would need pumps at the lower portion of the tunnel is to
>> > so our county judge need not worry this water will be standing --
>> there will be recirculation pumps.
that's one of the primary benefits of the recirculation pumps as well.
by the way, I just wanted to let you know we have had three-dimensional models developed for the project and they are sitting on the other side of this wall.
so if you get a break, I would encourage to you look at them.
they give a good feel for the plans of what is going to be built as part of the tunnel.
>> will they be out there until early afternoon?
>> they should be all day.
>> questions?
it sound a lot more positive than the few earlier meetings that I attended, the consultants and professionals were kind of wondering how to make this project go, I thought.
but there are similar projects in other communities and the riverwalk down in san antonio was kind of referred to as the nearest project similar to this, I guess.
especially in terms of our ability to generate significant additional economic development by way of a project like this.
so looks like we're moving in the right direction.
>> and in fact I think from leslie's slides what you'll see is the increase in appraised values is higher than we anticipated even before the project is constructed so that's certainly good news.
>> okay.
well, thank you very much.
we appreciate your update and we'll blame mr.
nellis for any problems that we see.
>> [laughter]
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 2:31 PM