Austin Real Estate Blog

Trammel Crow Co., a well-known developer of industrial and office space in urban areas, has been active in Austin for some time now. However, it has not had the public presence other companies have garnered and has instead worked in the background, hoping to one day obtain the project and the reputation it so justly deserves.

That waiting recently paid off when Trammel Crow won the city bid, with partner Constructive Ventures, to build the Thomas Green Water Treatment Plan. The project is one that many vied for, as it is six acres and four city-blocks, and fronts Lady Bird Lake in southern downtown Austin. City officials with executives from both Trammel Crow and Constructive Ventures are currently finalizing the details of the plan - something that could take up to a year.

While that is being done, Trammel Crow is continuing to move forward and expand its presence even more in Austin. It currently has $224 million of real estate under development in the city. The Shore, Trammel Crow’s 192-unit condo on Lady Bird Lake, is due to open in a few months. Similarly, 64,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, along with residential buildings will soon be complete. And Lakeline Mall, a 272,000 square-foot project, is scheduled to be finished by January 2009. In addition to those, there are many more projects in the development or proposal stages.

Clearly, Trammel Crow is a force that will become even more dominant in Austin in the upcoming months. It has proven repeatedly that it can and will develop quality projects, and that it is prepared to tackle both large and smaller plans. And with the acquisition of the Thomas Green Water Treatment Plan it has shown the better known companies that it too can compete . . . and win.

Two Kenedy County wind plants will go on, as planned, thanks to a federal judge’s dismissal of a case against them. Judge Lee Yeakal of the U.S. District Court in Austin announced on August 4^th that he would be dismissing the case that was to be heard later in the month. It is unknown as yet what the reasoning behind the dismissal was, but there are no approvals needed to place such plants on private land, as was the situation in this case.

The Coastal Habitat Alliance had filed the suit against PPM Energy and Texas Wind, as they felt that the companies had not done enough research and investigation as to the effects of the plants on local wildlife habitats. This suit was their second attempt to halt the building of these two plants. The first was also dismissed by a judge, but will be appealed. The alliance has not yet decided as to whether they will appeal this dismissal, as well, as the judge has yet to release a statement on his reasoning.

According to the investment group responsible for the project, Australian based Babcock & Brown, their projects are intended to help the environment by providing renewable energy and to minimize damage to habitats and natural resources. The first phase of these wind farms is under construction and slated to be completed by the end of the year, while future additional turbines will be added. The companies involved feel that they have been extremely mindful of their project’s impact and have taken necessary steps to protect the local environment.

The United States Department of Commerce reports that overall construction spending has declined in May of 2008 by four tenths of a percent. Residential construction rates went down 1.6 percent in May, the same decline as in April. Non-residential construction rose slightly at three tenths of a percent, slightly less than the eight tenths rise in April.

Private construction rates fell seven tenths of a percent in May while public construction rose slightly at four tenths of a percent. This is after an unchanged rate in private construction and a slight fall of three tenths of a percent for public construction for April.

Home builders are understandably reluctant to start new construction while the market for new homes remains so soft. Also, the incidence of foreclosures continues to rise, putting more inventory on the market and making it that much harder to sell current houses.

Construction firms are putting their money into building hotels, motels and office space rather than the residential area. The home construction rate hit a 17 year low in May, with a seasonally adjusted rate of 975,000, compared with April’s start of a little over 1 million. Single family home starts came in at 674,000. Building permit applications came in at 969,000 in May, which is actually a little better than the 950,000 economists had been predicting.

Growth and development comes with a price and long time residents of the Hill Country are finding out how high a price they are willing to pay. As more people discover the charms of rural living, paradoxically, that rural living is fast disappearing. A higher population puts more stain on the infrastructure and resources and local governments have to accommodate the demand somehow. The trouble begins when the people of the counties absorbing this growth and development are not given a say in how the development is controlled.

On the edge of Bexar County simmers increasing resentment over the burgeoning population growth and inevitable development that follows such growth. While growth can be healthy for a region, unchecked and unregulated, it can destroy the land and character. The Hill Country folks are becoming increasingly concerned over land and water as developers are given carte blanche on where and how their construction is done.

Ranchers are battling developers and power companies as well as their own government representatives to protect their property and peace of mind. Blasting and land leveling equipment is a constant disruption and residents’ complaints and attempts at legislating the development have been largely ignored.

One concern is the state of Edwards Aquifer, the source of water for Bexar County. Edwards receives run off from just about everywhere in the county and natural filtering through the limestone that covers the area insures that the water is fairly pure and, after chlorination, is fit for use in homes and businesses. The worry is that run off would become contaminated with construction pollution and chemicals. Indeed, five wells in Leon Valley have been contaminated with industrial-strength solvents.

The residents of Bexar County aim to do something before it’s too late.

I was reading my email today and came across a discussion from one of the cohousing lists that I subscribe to. (Cohousing, if you’re not familiar, is an alternative way of living within a community of folks who are like minded and want to live more like people used to live, neighborly that is. Co housing also let’s the participants design, build, and run their community more freely than in the current trend of master planned communities.) Anyway, the discussion was about a family here in Austin that is giving away all their possessions to seek a simpler, healthier, happier, more fulfilling life as homesteaders in Vermont.

The Harris family had felt that the things that they owned had begun to own them. While I see the truth in that, I have never been able to make a decision like they did. I have to give them that. They are donating their possessions to charity and setting off to start a new life. I’m jealous. It would be interesting to make such a leap towards something I believed in, but the last time I did that I would up as a REALTOR! While I’m generally pleased with my decision, it it not what I thought it would be. It’s some of what I thought and some of what I didn’t think. If it were terrible, it would have been relatively easy to just go back to program management in hi-tech. Now look at the Harris’. If what they are doing isn’t what they think it is and they want to do something else, it could be very hard. I admire that they are willing to take that chance and go for their dreams.

I wish them and their family the best. I’ll be following along as long as they are writing their blogs.

You can follow along as well at the Cage Free Family Blog.

If you are interested in reading the full story you can get it and photos at the NYT.

Hope you had a great weekend.

Joe

Below is an excerpt from the NYT article.

May 17, 2008
Chasing Utopia, Family Imagines No Possessions
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and RACHEL MOSTELLER

AUSTIN, Tex. — Like many other young couples, Aimee and Jeff Harris spent the first years of their marriage eagerly accumulating stuff: cars, furniture, clothes, appliances and, after a son and a daughter came along, toys, toys, toys.

Now they are trying to get rid of it all, down to their fancy wedding bands. Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May.

“It’s amazing the amount of things a family can acquire,” said Mrs. Harris, 28, attributing their good life to “the ridiculous amount of money” her husband earned as a computer network engineer in this early Wi-Fi mecca.

The Harrises now hope to end up as organic homesteaders in Vermont.

“We’re not attached to any outcome,” said Mrs. Harris, a would-be doctor before dropping out of college, who grew up poverty-stricken in a family that traces its lineage back through the Delanos and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Mayflower settler, Isaac Allerton.

Mr. Harris, 30, who dropped out of high school and “rode the Internet wave,” agreed, saying they were “letting the universe take us for a ride.”

They are not alone.

Matt and Sara Janssen, who traded down from their house in Iowa to a studio apartment in Montana and finally an R.V. powered by vegetable oil, now crisscross the country with their 4-year-old daughter, highway nomads living on $1,500 a month.

Not that simplicity need be that spartan. Cindy Wallach and her husband, Doug Vibbert, of Annapolis, Md., moved out of their apartment with an “everything must go” party and, along with their 3-year-old son, now sail and make their home on a 44-by-24-foot catamaran.

“We never wanted four walls and beige carpet,” Ms. Wallach said.

Though it may not be the stuff of the typical American dream, the voluntary simplicity movement, which traces its inception to 1980s Seattle, is drawing a great deal of renewed interest, some experts say.

“If you think about some of the shifts we’re having economically — shifts in oil and energy — it may be the right time,” said Mary E. Grigsby, associate professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri and the author of “Buying Time and Getting By: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement.”

“The idea in the movement was ‘everything you own owns you,’ ” said Dr. Grigsby, who sees roots of the philosophy in the lives of the Puritans. “You have to care for it, store it. It becomes an appendage, I think. If it enhances your life and helps you do the things you want to do, great. If you are burdened by these things and they become the center of what you have to do to live, is that really positive?”

Juliet B. Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and author of “The Overspent American,” said the modern “downshifters,” as she called them, owed debts to the hippies and the travel romance of Jack Kerouac.

“Their previous lives have become too stressful,” Dr. Schor said. “They have a lack of meaning because their jobs are too demanding.”

Mrs. Harris, who with her husband home-schools their son, Quinn, 5, and plans to do the same with their 15-month-old daughter, Nichola, agreed that there was something of the hippies in their quest: “the ideals, the peace and love, the giving and freedom.”

…

Construction began on the Anzalduas International Bridge in June 2007 on the US side and August 2007 on the Mexican side, and is well on its way toward the scheduled completion date of June 2009. The US-Mexican bridge will span the Rio Grande from the town of Mission, Texas, to the town of Reynosa in Tamaulipas, Mexico.

The 3-mile bridge is expected to cost about $168 million and create hundreds of new jobs in the area. Governments on both sides of the border are lobbying to allow commercial and cargo vehicles across the bridge. The two towns are both fast growing border towns and the hope is that the bridge will bring in more growth in commercial traffic on both sides.

The project has taken 14 years of planning and negotiation. The two towns on either side of the border - Mission on the American side and Reynosa on the Mexican side - have been experiencing unprecedented growth during the past decade. Mission, itself, has been attracting such high-end companies as Panasonic, Black & Decker, and Tractor Supply & Co. In addition, a nearly 40-acre development featuring a brand new Target and H-E-B Plus Grocery has sprung up and is attracting some big retail stores like TJ Maxx, Office Depot, and Petco.

New subdivisions are being constructed, including residential, retail, schools, and other businesses with some high-end homes ranging in price from $80,000 all the way up to nearly $1 million.

Meanwhile, officials on both sides of the Rio Grande are confident that the bridge will stay on course for its opening date of June 2009 and are making sure they both deliver a solid, quality construction with frequent meetings and constant overview of the project.

The job market in Austin is steady, and has actually grown a bit, adding nearly 22,000 jobs in the past year. The hospitality industry posted 1,500 new jobs in March while the government sector added 1,600. Transportation and utilities also posted decent gains for the year, adding 4,000 jobs. Unemployment rates for the state as a whole stayed steady at 4.2 percent.

Statewide, Texas has maintained a job growth rate of 2.1, twice that of the nationwide rate of 1 percent in 2007, and the market is predicted to remain strong for the next year at least. In spite of a national downturn, Texas, and Austin in particular, have managed to sustain a healthy environment for job opportunities.

A new initiative for creating jobs can be found in Austin’s zero-waste proposal. Reuse and recycling efforts - in thrift stores and recycling plants, for example - could create up to 500 new jobs in the “green-collar” industry. Also, due to initiatives proposed by Austin Mayor Will Wynn as part of his “Climate Protection Plan” announced last year, these green-collar workers will be increasingly in demand as people look to revamp their homes, schools, government and office buildings to be more environmentally friendly.

The growth doesn’t stop there. The Austin Chamber of Commerce announced an ambitious plan in March of this year to create 117,000 new jobs over the next five years, adding over $10 billion to the area payroll. Part of Opportunity Austin, this next phase focuses on convergence technology, digital media, green industries, office and health care jobs, and life sciences. The chamber is looking to attract corporate headquarters as well as establish a medical school to attract medical device and biotech industries.

With all the excitement and innovation in building environmentally friendly facilities, even the US Army is getting into the act. Fort Hood aims to be the first Army base to construct a building to comply with the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.

In order to meet LEED’s sustainable standards, buildings are required to use 30 percent less energy and 20 percent less water than a comparable but non-green building. The building must also meet standards set by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) for improvements in indoor air quality.

Fort Hood has already instituted an Environmental Management System (EMS), which includes educating the installation’s solders, families, and other base personnel in reducing waste and energy use while improving the quality of life. In fact, Fort Hood has already introduced recycling and reuse strategies that have saved 3 million gallons of water and a million gallons of hazardous waste.

Everyone on base is expected to be responsible for complying with the standards enacted by the US Army Environmental Command (USAEC). The USAEC provides initiatives for Army installations’ efforts to “go green” through its Secretary of the Army Environmental Awards. The competition for this prestigious award is fierce and Fort Hood was among the 2007 winners for its improvements in the environmental quality on base.

The move toward environmentally friendly building is not only the result of global concerns about climate change and rising pollution levels, but a response to a directive from USAEC mandating all new vertical building construction to achieve at least a silver level LEED standard. The buildings must meet requirements set by LEED for sustainability, energy efficiency, and air quality. Fort Hood wants to be the first to build one.