Travis County Commissioners Court
December 1, 2009,
Item 27
>> number 27 is to receive briefing on city of Austin's waller creek master plan and take appropriate action.
take appropriate action was added just in case there is action that we should take.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> judge Biscoe and Commissioners.
jim robertson with the city of Austin planning and development review department.
i'm the director of urban design for the city and among other things also the project manager to the waller creek district master plan.
i do have a presentation.
i think somebody is on their way over to load it on to the system.
the -- but I'll go ahead and get started.
as -- I have a couple slides that I can cover without you even having to look at them because in fact they are in some ways review for information that -- that you are well aware of.
which is the waller creek flood control tunnel project.
as you know, flooding has been a decades or longer, centuries old problem along waller creek.
and, of course, Travis County has gone into partnership with the city of Austin to create a financing mechanism to build a flood control tunnel along -- for waller creek.
the tunnel itself will be a little over a mile long.
the inlet where the flood waters coming downstream will enter the tunnel will be at waterloo park at roughly 12th and red river.
the outlet for the tunnel will be at -- at lady bird -- sure, sorry about that.
the outlet will be at lady bird lake.
the tunnel will be 60 or 70 feet underground.
one of the benefits of a tunnel is that in addition to capturing flood waters coming downstream from northern portions of the watershed and taking them underground and release them at lady bird lake, we'll are the opportunity to have clean water flowing all the time.
it's good from a eco system point of view, aesthetic point of view and so forth.
the -- about million square feet of the eastern portion of downtown Austin is currently within the 100-year flood plain of waller creek.
the tunnel will remove essentially all of that from the 100-year flood plain.
the 100-year flood will now be contained within the banks of the creekist.
that will have enormous benefits from the point of view of being able to stabilize the banks, obviously reduce or eliminate flood risk.
water quality will be improved and so forth, but it provides extraordinary opportunities for redevelopment and for the construction and implementation of amenities, pathways and plazas and so forth along the creek.
of course, it is the redevelopment opportunity that provides the funding mechanism for the project.
and as you well know because Travis County is co-partner in the tax increment finance district, the city and county went in together on 2007 and created the waller creek t.i.f.
the city is contributing 100% of its increment, the county is contributing 50% of its tax increment.
and, of course, the city will issue debt which will be reimbursed through the proceeds that the tax increment.
that does cover the hard costs, the capital costs of the tunnel as well as operations and maintenance of the tunnel.
it's worth mentioning that that -- those revenues, however, are expected to offer offer -- cover only that.
that the funding for any improvements that are recommended via the master plan that time here to talk to you about are not covered by the tax increment finance district fnlght we are in the early stages of identifying potential funding sources and so forth for that.
so I'm going to shift over now.
that's just two, three minutes of background on the tunnel, and tell you about sort of the master plan project, where we are now and just give you a taste of the major recommendations.
you have in front of you a draft master plan.
we are at sort of a mid-point in the project, which is an opportune time for me to come and talk to you.
the goals of the project are first, of course, to establish, identify a community vision for the project and then develop a conceptual level master plan for what we want not only the creek corridor to be, but a broader district within downtown Austin.
we've developed three guiding principles to inform our decision making on this.
one is to enhance the ecological, hyde logical and open space of the corridor.
all thee of these values are highly compromised right now, as you know.
it has certain open space characteristics, but it's highly degraded.
and -- and although there are still -- there is still a functioning ecosystem there, it is highly impaired.
a second general principle has to do with linkagees.
we want to use this project as a way of providing north, south, east, west and other linkagees within you a through and into our downtown.
it's a great opportunity to do that.
it's a linear project in nature, but we're trying to make it not just a north-south linear project, which is the orientation of the creek, but also to use it as an opportunity to further enhance east-west link ages into an adjacent to our downtown.
then the third guiding principle is what I touched on already which is the idea of promoting development activity and investment not only alongside the creek, but in broader waller creek district.
i'm going touch on that theme a couple times.
we're trying not to have this be a project about what happens literally on the creek, but what happens in a brouder waller creek district.
i have a few slides that walk you through a couple of the ago suspects of these guiding principles.
we do want this to be an attractive green way open space.
this is a picture along waller creek today and it shows both sort of opportunities and -- and sort of some of the resources and bletsing of blessf current conditions.
the corridor has enormous potential and in some places today it is very beautiful.
this points automaker there are a series of historic bridges along the corridor that are embedded in the history of our city.
we want there to be more sort of outdoor oriented, publicly oriented activities along the creek than there are today.
it's an enormous opportunity to really introduce a strong character and identity to a piece of our downtown.
the uses that are alongside the creek today do not have a strong relationship to the creek and, now you know, there are few that do.
the boiling pot you may be familiar with.
has taken advantage of its creekside location.
even recent projects, I think it's red river flats, apartment complexes, has not taken advantage of its location to banks of the creek.
we want to introduce activities that really enhance the open space experience, that people will come there, they will have multiple things to do, not just necessarily move along the creek, but experience an art fair or stop for a meal, things like that.
this slide here while sort of benign in character emphasizes a particular point.
we want -- part of our vision is no to not make this just a creek specific experience.
one of the extra teex, and we've had a lot of interaction with san antonio about the riverwalk and one of the critiques has been it's a one-sided experience.
there are buildings that front on the street and the riverwalk and on the riverwalk side it's thriving, it's high revenue retail operations, but on the street side of the same building there may be a for rent sign out.
literally they almost can't give that space away.
that's changing in san antonio through their efforts, but one of our goals is to make this not just a creek centric experience but push the benefits outward from the creek to benefit the broader district.
of course, that has benefits for the tax increment finance structure as well.
we do have existing businesses and other uses in the area that we would like to build on.
red river is now a live music corridor of international rerepute.
we have sixth street that goes directly over waller creek sort of near the eastern end.
our convention center is there, there's a whole lot of great uses that we can build on in order to leverage the investment.
these are some maps that are probably be easier to look at afterwards in the master plan that I've handed to you.
any time you try to capture about a mile and a half of -- of area in a small graphic, it gets a little challenging.
the illustrative plan on the top of the slide is kind of the overall story of our draft master plan.
it identifies the improvements, the opportunities sites and so forth.
i do want to highlight a couple things.
and if I run my cursor, can you see?
this lower segment of waller creek roughly from lady bird lake to third street there consist of largely improvements, stream bank stabilization, the installation of a fully accessible multimodal path way system that connects to and leverages all of the activity that occurs along lady bird lake.
we are also recommending substantial improvements to palm park.
and I put an orange arrow in this lower graphic to point out the location of palm school, which is a major county asset.
i know in your master planning process that you are engaged in right now, the future uses and -- and -- the future uses of the palm school are being considered.
it's an extraordinary sight from point of view of an opportunity.
it's half a block from waller creek.
the north side of it faces directly on to palm park.
and we are recommending that palm park receive a rather extreme makeover and really become a viable and active urban park.
waller creek runs right through the middle of it.
another major piece of our recommendation is starting at third street and going up to seventh street, we are recommending the major north-south movement corridor actually be along sabine street.
it's what we're calling the sabine street promenade.
one of the reasons is this is the portion of the waller creek corridor where conditions are extremely tight.
the place you may be familiar with next to the hilton garden inn and the sabine street lofts or whatever it's called.
it's almost a slot or canyon through there.
the building walls come right down into the creek on both sides.
and this is an area where we're up against our dueling interest of establishing a movement corridor, but also making places where people will want to be.
because of the tight conditions in the creek corridor, if you put a full, you know, multimodal accessible path way there's not going to be a lot of creek exposed.
it will almost take on the character of a culvert.
so what we're recommending is in this four block segment from third to seventh street that we make a major investment into a streetscape project to make a wonderful street.
wide sidewalks, 18 or 20 feet on the other side and encourage redevelopment along that four-lock section of sabine street.
the next major segment would then be north of 7th street and there's about two blocks where the creek passes alongside of two -- two huge parcels of where city owns -- where there are city assets.
the police station, community court building, parking and vehicle service and so forth.
it is our recommendation to the city at this point that the city consider long term reinvestment in those parcels in a way that will take advantage of their location alongside the creek and contribute to this project.
and then the last segment from 9th to 12th street is in some ways a park improvement project.
the city of Austin owned parkland along that entire segment and it's really a matter and that's really one of the more beautiful sections today.
there is exposed limestone benches and ledgees in the creek and it's really quite scenic today.
so that's more of a park improvement project.
the top map in this slide just summarizes our sort of circulation concept.
we want waller creek, but the creek and the district, to be highly connected to the rest of downtown.
and to u.t.
to the north and east Austin to the east and so forth.
all these orange arrows on here summarize this, but this is another manifestation of our desire to push the benefits of the flood control project in the just -- and leave them at the edge of the creek but to push those benefits deeper into downtown.
we do anticipate that there will be opportunities for all different types of development up and down this creek corridor.
most of the parcels are zoned central business district.
there are a few that have other types of zoning, but most are zoned cbd which gives them a lot of entitle mentsdz and opportunities in terms of uses.
one of the important physical factors and constraints on development will be there are a large number of capital view corridors either originating at i-35 or east that will limit the height of development especially in the middle portion of this creek core do to anywhere from, say, 25 to 125 feet.
while on the one hand you can regard that as -- as a barrier or hurdle to development, in some ways we regard that maybe as an asset in the sense that it will encourage a lot -- it will make opportunities for lots of different types of development.
four to five to six-story construction, of course, is a lot less expensive than high-rise construction.
that may make for greater affordability that wouldn't be if the it to the sky and hundreds of feet high.
>> may I add that you get some awesome views of the downtown area just east of i-35.
if you come right up to the frontage road, and I'm thinking of medina street in east Austin.
those are awesome views.
>> right.
>> of downtown.
i really would hate to see people lose those views.
>> well, we're not -- and neither in this project nor any other planning project that we're engaged in are we talking about tinkering with the capitol view corridors.
in some ways they provide an opportunity because they make the way and make it feasible to think about doing, you know, a six-story boutique hotel or something like.
that they may make it -- they may help provide spaces for creative culture endeavors and those would have a hard time finding their way if it were all to the sky spietlements.
to entitlements.
>> we've done ad model showing the development capacity of downtown.
this is a piece of that for waller creek corridor.
and among other things, it illustrates the effect of the capitol view corridors.
there are no capital view corridors that inhibit in the rainey street district and that's why you see a lot of tall buildings there, just to help you understand this graphic, the brownish buildings are -- are models of potential development.
any existing build ing is sort of a whiter or a grayish color.
a couple salient facts about this.
this model and the data that went into form ing this model suggest that even with existing baseline entitlements today and considering capitol view corridors, we believe there's the capacity for about 8.7 million square feet of development in -- and this is the tax increment financing district represented here.
if -- if the city were to grant density bonus, which is city already does and one of the pieces of work of our downtown Austin plan right now is a proposal for a revised downtown density program, that potential could go up to 10.7 million square feet.
and that only takes into account assembled parcels of a quarter block or larger.
those are the parcels where it's easier to provide on-site parking and so forth, but the smaller parcels might contribute to those numbers and take them beyond there as well.
the original projection of development in the tax increment finance document was 7.2 million, so you can see that both of the numbers we have modeled as potential development exceed the number that was projected in the t.i.f.
financial projection.
that's an important fact.
we would not want our numbers to come in lower than that.
and I should mention, this is a good opportunity to mention that the city has a consultant on board and working right now to do an update of the t.i.f.
financial projection.
i should mention that the jums I've just thrown out, the 8.7 million and 10.7 million of capacity, they are contactly that.
we are in our master plan project are not to do market projections or analysis.
so our numbers are capacity.
theoretical capacity.
the t.i.f.
-- the consultants that I mentioned right now, they will be looking at market conditions and so forth.
so our task is simply to model capacity.
it's an important distinction to make.
i now have three or four slides, they are hypotheticallal sections cut through the creek that will illustrate, give you beginnings of the character that we may be suggesting through our draft master plan.
this is just south of waterloo park.
i'm going to walk you from south to north which is three or four of these.
this is around symphony square.
red river street to the left.
this is in some ways a park improvement project.
we have great assets, the park plan, the creek quite beautiful in this segment so it's a matter of improving them and making them more of a asset to our Austin community.
now, this is between 5th and 6th street and all of these looking south.
this gives you a little bit of the character of what this sabine street promenade is.
which is over to the right on this image.
as you can see, the carriageway for the cars is probably two lanes wide.
the sidewalks that we recommend would be very wide sidewalks, plenty of room for sidewalk taff face, for business to open out to the street.
but we are also recommending we would take advantage of every connection between that street and the creek.
there are old alleys that city has.
that would provide across-walk sections and that's what you are seeing in the middle portion of the slide.
the left portion of the slide gives you -- this is that area I was referring to as a slot or canyon and that represents the challenges if we were to force our way through with a wide 12 or 15-food wide path way, we would almost being covering up the creek in this area.
this is in palm park actually.
one of our major recommendation is dramatic improvement to palm park.
little one of the most under utilized parks in the city right now, but it has extraordinary potential.
and then the creek runs right through it on sort of the western portion of the park.
us a get towards lady bird lake it would take on a more park-like quality.
and finally I want to talk about sort of what we are recommending in terms of implementation.
and I'll confess when we first got started on this prong, we were talking in terms of pilot projects, like maybe you would go in and surgicalry select one or strategic parcels and redevelopment those.
it is increasingly our thinking that a more comprehensive, a sort of -- a more transform active improvement project is necessary to overcome some of the negatives that exist a waller creek today.
the negative public issues, safety issues, public -- or cleanliness issues and so forth.
so what we are currently recommending is sort of a phase 1 plan and it's the green swath from lady bird lake, palm park and the sabine street promenade.
we are recommending as sort of a first phase project that we engage in all of the recommendations all the way from lady bird lake up through palm park and make the streetscape improvements along sabine which would to you all the way up to 7th street.
the other thee sort of implementation packages would be in the sort of maroon color there.
that's that middle segment where the creek is highly confined.
where in some ways there is publicly owned land along there.
that might be involved in more public-private partnerships to really try to encourage and incentivize creekside uses that really take advantage of waller creek.
the next piece up, the bluish piece, those are the parcels owned by the city of Austin.
city of Austin police headquarters, fleet services and then the waller creek center at 10th and waller creek.
those are city owned assets.
and in that sense they represent perhaps long-term opportunities to really put in place uses that are highly creative synergy between those uses and the creek.
then the fourth piece going all the way up through waterloo park is really more of a park improvement type implementation strategy.
>> what color is it?
the fourth piece.
>> the green piece at the far right and sort of large rectangular shaped piece is waterloo park, which is the biggest public park in downtown Austin.
it's an extraordinary opportunity.
i just mention that the parks and recreation department has hired a consultant that is working right now to develop a long-range master plan for waterloo park.
with the idea being perhaps a very significant transformation of that park to make it short of a signature park for our city.
in terms of where we are, as I said, we are at an opportune time for me to visit with you.
we have a draft master plan that you have in front of you.
we've had a number of meetings.
we had a big town hall meeting several weeks ago.
we've had a number of stakeholder meetings.
we've briefed city council, the city manager, the waller creek advisory committee and we've gotten a whole lot of feedback.
another piece of our work is a set of development standards.
those are currently undergo staff review and will undergo broader review as well, to put in place guidelines for future development to support the vision that we are recommending.
we'll also in the coming peeks be developing cost estimates for all of the recommendations that we are making.
those -- we'll have those in behind around the time of the holidays.
and they will begin to give us a sense of okay, what is the magnitude of the challenge to identify funding sources for this project.
and then in the first quarter or so of 2010, we'll be coming back with a final master plan and we'll go through a whole second -- actually it's a third round of public input.
we'll be taking it to city council and also boards and commissions, the waller creek citizens advisory committee.
i would be happy to come back and provide briefings and other interaction with you along the way as well.
i should mention and I should have mentioned it earlier in my presentation that county staff has -- has been a great asset to us.
we've had multiple occasions to interact and exchange information with your staff over the course of this project.
obviously you have both a financial interest in the sense that you are a partner in the t.i.f., but also have an interest in the sense that through the palm school and other assets, you notice know, you have an investment in our downtown and we've been interacting steadily with your staff over the course of this project.
>> you mentioned earlier about the linear contribution, but not only that the east-west outreach as far as the north-south.
and I didn't see it anywhere in there, and you may have heard it from maybe the meetings that you've conducted.
and that is the subject matter of parking.
right now when university of Texas has its games, baseball, parking is -- I guess at a premium and as a result you streets such as comal, leona, navasota, just overwhelm with packing.
and the same hold true for the football season.
the same scenario, and, of course, a lot of the residents have been complaining about the parking that they have to deal with in and out of their residence because we're talking about a residential area.
>> uh-huh.
>> just, you know, east of ih-35, which is -- is -- I think should get some say or some equal say.
now, I do not know what you or have you all envisioned because people are going to steal park from somewhere.
now we're saying from 12th street to 7th street, and what's been happening, a lot of parking has been going on in the neighborhoods where folks are significant concerned and you can see why.
they are overwhelmed with persons trying to get access to the houses and stuff.
it really posts a serious problem.
with now this particular event and along with u.t.
events, football and baseball, and now had, it just appears to me has there been any consideration for the impact on the residential areas east of this particular tunnel that, again, may have to deal with significant parking problems and now we're saying maybe from 1st street all the way up to beyond manor road.
the rcialg areas in there.
-- residential areas in there.
persons wanting to do what they do, but then again parking.
so have that been addressed at any meetings?
you heard you had several and was wondering that is that been brought up.
>> parking has been a major target of conversations ranging from small staying holder to town haul meetings.
i wish I could say we could solve the parking problems associated with ult football games or games at disch-falk.
but there are a couple of issues that may relate directly to that.
one, parking is an issue for this project -- well, let me back up for a second.
i guess first of all -- I hope this doesn't come off wrong, but it would be a nice problem to have if waller creek became so popular that it attracted number of people to parking isn't a year.
currently that's not an issue because very few people think of waller creek as an asset for our city.
having said that, we recognize parking is a big issue.
in the middle of the creek where the size of the parcels tends to be pretty small, parking lot.
one of the recommendations is that we really think about identifying some -- first of all, using the existing parking assets we have along here, the convention center, garagees up by waterloo park, but that we also look at perhaps there's opportunities to put in some other parking facilities that could be shared use.
in other words, they might -- if you want to open a business in one of these areas, you could meet your needs at a parking facility maybe a block away.
that may provide some help for the scenario you screebd.
perhaps a bigger project is we are hopeful that in the long term, the vision we had rear would be that people -- here would be people would come this the portion of downtown, perhaps including disch-falk field or memorial stadium and park once.
they might choose to come downtown and park in one of parking gansz and instead of getting into their car to go to disch-falk, because hopefully we would have put in place improvements that would make it a pleasant experience to walk from where you maybe went on dinner up to member meml stadium or disch-falk.
>> I just think it needs to be looked at a little more because of the issues that have been raised and prawt to bt to my about this being overwhelmed with disch-falk field.
if you have attended --
>> I have.
>> you will see what folks are talking about.
>> I'm guilt of one of those people parking on those streets to go to the baseball game.
>> all along in there.
>> thank you very much.
>> let's see what we can do to try to mitigate that as much as possible.
>> what does san antonio did for the riverwalk?
>> san antonio has a lot of parking structures in their downtown.
i think a lot of the people who use the riverwalk park in one of the parking structures downtown.
this is a portion of our downtown where for various reasons, including capitol view corridors and the flood risk that we're dealing with, there has generally not been the level of doesn't that would support construction of significant parking garages.
probably the biggest assets are the state garages along trinity.
south of there with the exception of the city of Austin's convention center parking, there are not huge parking structures available to support.
that that's why we're recommending that we not lose sight maybe build more parking capacity.
certainly we would encourage our parking needs be met on surface parking lots.
that's probably not the highest and best use and the most -- it doesn't add to the aesthetic and cultural goals.
>> having just been down in san antonio, park ing is a challenge and it's expensive.
and I think if we want to optimize our long-term potential, it's a good point that we need to think long term on availability and affordability of parking.
parking in san antonio was $15 every time you came in and out of it.
and that was a block from the riverwalk.
>> one thing that's probably worth mentioning on the subject of parking and mobility is the -- the commuter rail line, the metro rail line that will come online and service within the next month or two through cap metro, and, of course, we'll go to Leander 32 miles long, will come right into downtown along 4th street.
the street that runs alongside the convention center.
and the downtown station at least in early years of existence of that line will be right there at crosses waller creek.
so were waller creek to become a popular a lot of people into here and not put any parking burden at all upon this portion of downtown.
>> I have two points.
one is I attended a meeting years ago and during that meeting we discussed what an anengineering challenge addressing the flood issues would be and I left thinking something creative had to be in place in order to really address the flooding.
has that been worked out?
>> yes, that's -- you know, the engineering for the tunnel project is part way completed.
i believe the engineering for the tunnel project, the design -- you know, the design and documentation is roughly in the 60 to 80% complete stage.
that's not my sort of area of expertise or under my sort of level of responsibilities.
there's a whole separate city team and consultant team involved in the design and engineering of the tunnel.
but it's my understanding that they have worked out all the significant engineering challenges.
they will actually be running both actually and computer and physical models of the tunnel in a couple months that will demonstrate exactly how it will work and how we'll receive the flood waters coming downstream through u.t.
and so forth.
the engineering and design is well underway and, you know, coming towards significant completion.
>> okay.
i left that meeting thinking that, hey, this is a big deal.
i think it would be unfortunate if we complete this plan and the flooding issues remain.
so I have two requests.
one is that we visit with you in early 2010 and so I will feel real good about the 50% county t.i.f.
that we be listed among the groups that you will visit with.
>> uh-huh.
>> and secondly that when we visit in 2010, we be given like a two or three-minute overview of exactly what the engineering remedy is.
>> yes.
what we ought to do perhaps, and I know joe and his deputy director of the watershed protection department in the city has come in July and presented to you sort of an update, perhaps joe and I can both come back in early 2010 and joe can give you probably as much or more information than you want about the tunnel, how it works, how the design is coming, how we're meeting some of those challenges you alluded to and I'd be happy at that time to give you an update on the master plan topics.
>> the description of the problem that I heard was new and different.
so the obvious question is what's the fix.
and the answers from the engineering people there left me with the impression that they were still trying to sort through that.
not that they would not arrive at a good remedy, but I did -- I left there thinking at some point we really have to take a good look at what the remedy is to make sure it works.
>> the tunnel project is about a $126 million project.
and I don't remember the exact number, but quite a few millions of those are going to people smarter than I am in engineering to figure that out.
>> I don't want to get my socks wet if we spend that much money.
>> that's understandable.
and our intention on the master plan side is all of our improvements would be put in an area where even when the water does rise a little bit in the event of a big rain event, that your socks won't get wet and that we'll keep your feet dry even if you are walking along the path way at any of these locations we've talked about.
>> we're together.
>> very good.
comments, comments?
mr.
reeferseed.
>> I'm fine, just had a couple of questions that came to mind.
one of them echoes what you are saying and might have been answered, but the relocating the police headquarters?
and I'm wondering is that already needed or desired or in the plans or has that been -- the engineering challenges from that worked out already?
>> no, they haven't been worked out.
a feasibility, sort of a sort of conceptual level feasibility study has been done in terms of what would be involved in relocating the police headquarters.
obviously the costs are substantial.
you have to find an alternative location.
you've got to build a facility at that new location.
and so forth.
the city -- I don't have the numbers on the top of my head, but those numbers are significant.
the existing facility is -- I forget the age of it exactly, 25 to 30 years old.
>> it's been there a while.
>> it's been there a while.
and it's my understanding it doesn't meet all the current needs to serve as our police headquarters.
now, obviously city of Austin -- the police department would continue to have a downtown presence.
but I guess the way that this is visualized or conceptualized is that perhaps the department's headquarters might be elsewhere and that a downtown manned location obviously would continue to be downtown.
you know, you point out there are huge challenges involved this that, primarily money in terms of location and facilities.
but I don't think it's out of the question and you notice, kn, that's why we haven't identified it as an opportunity site because of its location alongside the creek.
>> do the police also see it as an opportunity for their -- like you mentioned, they've already got some things that they would like to improve or things that they need to happen that aren't really doable.
>> I think so.
in the sense that I believe that a new headquarters would better meet their needs as well.
both, you know, for booking and arraignment and all the other functions that occur there.
but I don't want to -- I don't want to misportray where we are in that.
we are in the sort of earliest stages of examining the feasibility of that idea.
>> and if you don't mind, the other question I have is about the words on the first little chart there that's in this thing is project benefits.
it says that the benefits, project benefits, for example, will remove -- then it says 42 commercial and residential structures, 12 roadways and over one million square feet.
i'm wondering, is any of that kind of relating to what he were saying earlier, is any of that plan for parking lots?
>> it's not removing the buildings, the way it's worded, will remove them from the 100-year flood plain.
in other words, they will -- those buildings will still be there.
>> oh, the tunnel will make it safer for them.
sorry for any misconception.
the buildings will stay, they won't get their feet wet in the event of a big rain.
they will be high and dry.
some of those are historic structures.
others may -- once the flood risk is removed, you know, all the different property owners will make their own decisions in terms of what the best disposition of their parcel is.
do they want to redevelop it and if so to what extent and in what form.
maybe I need to change the word removed.
the 100-year flood plain will be shrunk within the banks of the creek.
>> we look forward to seeing you again next year.
>> we'll see you maybe in two or three months if that's all right.
>> thank you.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 1:50 PM
