Travis County Commissioners Court
September 1, 2009,
Item 5
>> number 5.
receive briefing and discuss vision plan for the onion creek greenway.
>>
>> [indiscernible] testing, testing, 1, 2, 3.
it's on.
>> [laughter] I've been told I often don't get very excited about agenda items, but I'm excited about this item.
in 2005 the voters of Travis County approved a bond election, which included money for park bonds for open space acquisition in Travis County.
the proposition included a little over $8 million for accusation of open spaces in the onion creek green way.
after that election, we assembled staffs from various agencies, to develop what we call green print.
it's an area, it's a way to -- to categorize various types of land attributes.
and prioritize what are high, medium and low priority lands for -- for conservation.
and this map shows eastern Travis County.
the -- the corridor that we -- that we first applied green print to with the onion creek corridor, which starts here at the confluence of the colorado river and onion creek and goes all the way down and actually all the way into hays county, but this particular bond proposition was for precinct 4, so we took it from i-35 down to the confluence.
so that is the -- the subject of our -- of our presentation today.
this corridor of -- of onion creek, and when we -- once we assembled, by the way, this particular map shows the -- in dark color the highest priority, medium, next to high and then medium priority.
so what you are seeing in dark red, red, orange, are properties that -- that once we looked at all of the overlays, and that could be anything from tree covers to floodplain to -- to vegetation, soil types, these were the areas that we identified as being the highest priority for a -- for an acquisition in a green way program.
so we took that as our -- kind of our fundamental guideline.
and we went about starting to put together a strategy for acquisition.
that included acquiring floodplain areas because floodplains are one, important for water quality.
they are also typically forested.
that's where you see the tallest trees, the grass lands and the natural beauty is found along the riparian corridor.
we also wanted to come up with what we call minimum viable segments.
which means at the end of the day when all of the bond money is spent, do you have something the public can use.
we focused on being able to do segments of onion creek if there was never another bond election or never any public action, you would still have a segment of publicly accessible and usable green way.
then, finally, we looked at the issues and opportunities along the corridor to find out just what -- what is out there, what are some of the obstacles that we might face and what are some of the opportunities?
so I want to step you through the corridor real quickly.
this is the corridor itself.
and I'm going to be showing you some -- some slides actually, it's going to be a walking tour.
we're going to go from the confluence of the onion creek and the colorado river all the way back to i-35.
i'm going to show you some aerial views and some ground level views of what we saw when we took a walking tour of this area.
>> that was beautiful.
>> it was beautiful.
it's still beautiful, we hope to keep it that way.
the first picture is the confluence itself.
well, maybe not.
okay.
we're -- can you show that on the -- there we go.
all right.
that is the -- you are currently looking at the colorado river as you look back to Austin to your left is where onion creek comes in.
so it's a navigable stream.
what I want to point out here is the -- is one of our goals is connectivity.
eventually, you will see a -- you will see a river corridor from Austin to bastrop.
it's the colorado river trail.
and this onion creek will connect in with it.
here we are at the confluence, we expect at some points, maybe in a couple of decades, it will go on down to bastrop as a greenway, also back to Austin, lady bird lake with another series of trails and green ways that go there.
the idea is this onion creek greenway is a much larger system of greenway's throughout Travis County.
you talk about a walk for a day trail from oak hill to zilker park to kyle, we'll have when we finished a walk for a day trail between oak hill and the confluence of the colorado river.
and all of that is -- is very possible as you will see here.
the next is a -- is a photograph of -- step on through that.
this is a -- now looking downstream of the -- you are looking east towards bastrop.
right over where the onion creek pours into the colorado river.
to your left you see the tree orchards, which are north of the river.
and then the right in the middle is a piece of property that we are currently acquiring.
so you -- so the main point here I guess is the nature of the -- the corridor itself.
next paragraph.
this is a -- next photograph.
this is a photograph that demonstrates really this is looking east over southeast metro park.
this lower portion all the treed area is actually currently in -- in southeast metro park.
the trail that we -- we will go through this forested area and on down to the confluence.
what the picture demonstrates is what has happened over time.
all of this area, at one time, used to be tree covered, as you see in the lower right hand part of the -- of the photograph.
but over the years, the farming and whatnot, the tree covers was cleared and it was put into farming, and part of what we will be doing in the properties that we acquire is restoring some of the native trees and grasses to the -- to the area.
what we saw when we first took a look at this is the opportunity of connecting the number of public parks and public properties that were already there.
you see in there these are all city properties, beginning with metro creek, park, recently acquired.
you have a subdivision being bought out by the u.s.
army corps of engineers from the targeted areas, frequently flooded subdivision, going to buy out those homes and convert the convert the area to parkland.
you have two golf courses, mckinney falls, very beautiful area.
moya park.
you have -- you have
>> [indiscernible] creek another corps of engineers subdivision that will be bought out and we converted into a park.
we have acquired the burdoff properties and the barclay properties, these are currently now owned by the county as part of the 2005 bond election.
you have southeast metro park, which we acquired back in 1997.
next though that is the onion creek preserve, the city property.
and then we have parkland to be dedicated to the county when a development called water's edge first plats, that will take us basically to the confluence, so you can see about 80% of the corridor is currently in public ownership.
in what we -- and what we have been trying to do is assemble other properties along the way, so we have a continuous corridor of publicly owned greenland from the confluence to i-35 to about a 22, 21-mile corridor.
the intensity of uses, these park lands will be of various intensity uses, you have the highest, metro park, which has ball fields, lit fields, all sorts of sports activity down to a more passive park like moya park which there is for picnicking, leisure activities.
all of these will have various levels, some neighborhoods, some districts, some metropolitan levels, park recreational activities.
a hike and bike trail that goes along the entire corridor.
this is a -- what we call barclay meadows, an aerial view, fortunately part of the pond that stock pond was excavated by a state department of transportation when they constructed state highway 130.
this is actually a pit that was left behind and is now -- now not only filled with water, natural spring, but stocked with fish.
we are going for convert that into a fishing pond
>> [laughter]
>> joe.
>> we will let you know when --
>> [multiple voices]
>> talking to you.
>> game wardens will be checking fishing licenses
>> [laughter]
>> this is again looking at the same property, but from -- from looking eastward and you see state highway 130, just on the other side of 130 that treed area.
it's a pecan grove.
where they put in a-- a picnic area, then that open field just beyond that is going to be open, a play field.
not -- not dedicated sport, but just kind of a common green area.
the other thing that I want to make note of is all around this area we will find new subdivisions going up and the idea is to get that connectivity between the residential areas and the greenbelt and so -- so not only -- is the greenbelt in and of itself important, but it's -- the connectivity it gives to all of the other surrounding activities.
>> [one moment please for change in captioners] this is an historical culvert.
we'll be integrating the historical sites along the way into the trail.
next.
this is the pecan grove at the barclay meadows.
this will be the site of a picnic area and a pavilion.
next.
this is just an example of the low -- if forest, the woodlands that was typical of all of the flood plains in eastern Travis County.
and we'll be allowing some of these areas to grow back to this original state.
as well as plant grass lands.
these are native grass lands.
all this area at one time used to look like this.
there are certain areas we'll designate for restoration back into the grass lands.
this is, again, flying a little further back.
this particular lower level is timber creek.
this is the corps of engineers target area that is currently being bought out for because all of these areas, all of these homes that you see are well under the 100-year flood plain and when it floods, they flood.
this area will be bought out and converted into a parkland.
this is an existing example of what happens after a flood.
these are mobile homes and they are pretty much destroyed because of the flood level.
the flood elevation probably got 5 to 10 feet above those mobile homes when it flooded.
this is a picture of the Austin-bergstrom property.
in the lower right-hand corner is a structure called colonel Moore's cabin and that will be integrated into the trail.
we're currently working with city of Austin to provide the necessary clearances for a hike and bike trail to be routed through this section of the airport property.
again, history is important here.
this is part of the Moore's crossing historical district.
this grocery is one of the oldest country grocery stores in the county.
it's still being operated, but it is within an historical district and we we to integrate that into the trail as well as the congress avenue bridge.
this is at moya park.
we restored it in 1997 so it's already part of the pedestrian crossing.
then we have the satellite for road and bridge office which has been vacated by road and bridge.
what we hope to do with that structure, with that area, with permission of the court, is to use it for multipurposes.
one, to preserve the flood plain as part of the corridor, but also to do a trailhead, perhaps a farmers market as well as using the existing maintenance facility for a city-county park maintenance facility using existing storage tanks and the shop that's there.
right below that you see an outcrop of lava.
and that's interesting because in the process of looking at this corridor, we found out that there is actually an old volcano called pilots knob which is on the map, one of the oldest geological formations in Travis County.
so there's a two-mile complex of lava that flowed from this pilots knob.
one of the reasons the flood plain through this area is so narrow, that's all through a lava field.
and what you'll see in this two-mile corridor is every once in a while along onion creek some outcrop from the lava.
mckinney falls is a eroded part of the lava flow.
next photograph.
okay.
back.
i'm sorry.
we may be missing a photograph.
this is an area -- one of the issues and opportunities here is this is the narrow stretch right here between satellite 1 and ma kenny falls.
you can see it's a very narrow strip.
on within side, the south side, you have an active mining operation.
it's called the dean ward pit.
and it will probably be active for a number of years.
on the north side in this area here is an area currently being used by the city to store its lime from water treatment plants processing.
so they are fill several former quarries with lime.
but in both of those there's some opportunities.
we believe in the long, long term, perhaps 40 years, when the pits have been completely filled with lime, they can be converted into ballfields.
just leveled out, topsoiled, planted and converted from lime to parkland use.
we believe the word pit also could go into transformation to alternate use.
i don't know if you are aware that trinity university in san antonio was once a quarry and I would like to see something similar to that in the dean ward plant perhaps in 40, 50 years.
it would be a great site for an acc campus.
there's opportunities to use a greenbelt as an agent of change to transform perhaps adverse current uses into better uses because of the value that the green way gives to the entire southeast Travis County.
and then we get into mckinney falls, currently used by the state for camping and all sorts of recreational activities.
we hope to integrate the trail through the park and so it becomes a destination for anyone that might be hiking or biking for the day.
get tired, just camp out for the night.
and then we're back into the whole array of city parks, two golf courses, any number of -- this is dove springs park here with a swimming pool that the county helped finance.
and you have a fairly significant soccer complex in the bow of onion creek right around william cannon boulevard.
and then you have parklands that are in some stage of development.
right now onion creek, metro park and the yorby are use pieces of property.
they have not been developed yet so they will probably be developed over the next decade or so.
ultimately we're going to tie this all the way back to slaughter creek, which is this fork in the road right here.
the city -- and at this point we're into the corporate area of the city.
they have plans to develop the slaughter lane creek all the way from slaughter creek greenway from oak hill all the way over to this point and they have major parks along the way.
so the ultimate vision is that you connect slaughter creek greenway with the onion creek greenway and you literally have a greenway that crosses all of Austin and southeastern Travis County.
now, where are we do with the onion creek?
i'm happy to say last Thursday the Texas parks and wildlife commission awarded Travis County a million dollars to develop the inaugural section of onion creek.
and that inaugural section is from fm 973 to state highway 71.
basically on both sides was -- f state highway 130.
we acquired three parcels.
this is the barclay.
we arequired both of the berdahl and the greenway formerly owned by the boy scouts along -- not part of onion creek but next to timber creek.
so we are in current -- we have title to all the properties between 973 and 71.
what this million dollar grant will do is build a hike and bike trail in this segment.
we'll also be building -- we'll be doing some restoration around the areas that had been farmed for years.
we'll convert these ponds into fishing ponds with fishing piers.
we'll have a picnic area, a canoe launch.
we'll have some historical interpretations of both the old bastrop highway and some of the other historical structures along the way.
and then picnic areas.
so it would be not a -- it's not a sports oriented corridor.
this is more of a neighborhood level activity and a way to basically come out, park your car, take a hike or bike ride down to an area, picnic and come back.
also we'll listening up the airport property -- link up the airport property and the trail through southeast metro down through the confluence, so we'll be doing this in segments.
i believe this segment can be done probably in the next three years.
we'll go ahead and employ someone to design the trail and start the construction and you'll have parking area.
so any number of details I won't go into.
these are just things that we normally do in our project management.
i want to brief the court on where we were right now with the 2005 bond program.
we will continue to finish our vision plan after we've coordinated with other entities including the state, city, any number of different participants in the city and bring back a vision plan to the court for adoption.
this is really just a status report.
thank you.
>> very exciting.
>> that is.
>> and joe, I want to commend you and your staff for this excellent work.
this is not just about our quality of life but it's for future generation.
you've done a fabulous job of laying this out.
>> one last thing, this is just one corridor.
we have other bond money.
we'll be working on gilleland creek.
>> thank you for allowing us to use and support us when we came before the voters on these open space tax issues as far as funding them to bonding issues.
it's just great.
it just great news.
Commissioner Gomez and precinct 4 are going to be --
>> absolutely.
fantastic.
>> thank you.
>> I think that we need to still look into the future for more open space.
because I think as the area grows, it's -- you know, people are going to need a place to go for a walk, you know, get away from all of the business.
and -- but I think it's just going to be wayneer all the way around -- winner all the way around.
>> anything further?
thank you very much.
>> thank you all.
thank you.
>> [applause]
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 3:14 PM
