Last week saw the monthly meeting of the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport Plan Implementation Advisory Commission (RMMA PIAC). This is a group of citizens who are responsible to keep the City of Austin Council up to date with the goings-on at Mueller. It’s an interesting meeting of various stakeholders in the project – residents, residents of neighboring areas, the developer, and the neighborhood designers were there last Tuesday.
The people present share a passion for what goes on, and the decisions made and recommendations presented have far-reaching implications for the predicted 10,000 residents and 10,000 employees. So unless you really care about what goes on, the meetings might not be considered “interesting”. It’s a tightly-run, two hour meeting with due process and procedure. Here are some of the things on the agenda last week:
Discussion of the Austin Energy Substation community meeting. The meeting sounded fun to someone like me who enjoys Lego. The participants were given architectural elements with which to create landscaping barriers around the four sides of the new substation planned for the Morris Williams Golf Course. It allowed the participants to prioritize and work within a budget to collaboratively create a solution.
Mattie Street Lots subdivision. These are the sites of the new detached Garden Homes (sometimes called Tweener Lot Homes and Gap Homes). Catellus shared that the lots would be around 26’x60′. Compare that to a row home (attached) on a 22.5′ wide lot. One interesting point that was discussed was maintaining affordability with these homes.
Planner Jim Adams from McCann Adams Studio (ex- ROMA Austin) explained that the new homes were affordable by design (in addition to some participating in the income-qualified Affordable Program). The market will ultimately determine what pricing will be attached to the homes, though the target price-point for the two and three story homes is $150,000 – $260,000. There’s no guarantee what the market will dictate – it could be that the actual sales prices for the market rate homes will end up being higher.
Hangar Committee Update Resident and PIAC member Corky Hilliard is working to provide more access for community events at the Browning Hangar. This is great news, as far as I’m concerned. When people are considering relocating to Mueller, we go out and look around the neighborhood – we check out the model at Mueller Central, and then take a tour of the development. I always get asked, “What’s the hangar being used for?”. Always. While we’ve seen some pretty cool events there so far (the Austin Chapter of the AIA’s 2009 Gala Awards ceremony springs to mind), it will be great when we can make more use of it.
The new EMS (station #33) which is going to be adjacent to the current fire station on Airport Blvd. Construction could start Q1 2011, depending on the bidding process. Not all that exciting for me personally – details of bi-fold doors for the faster release of vehicles were mentioned.
When is the next PIAC meeting? If you have a few hours to invest in learning more about Mueller – the next meeting is 6p-8p Tuesday August 10th 2010 at Waller Creek Center, 625 E10th St Austin TX 78701. If you live at Mueller you can drive (or car pool or cycle) from the neighborhood in under 15 minutes (especially if you exit on Manor Rd and avoid turning left onto Airport Blvd). The meetings are also announced on MuellerCommunity.com.
Don’t fancy the drive? Walk to the next developer update on June 23rd at 6pm at Mueller Central.
Garreth Wilcock is a resident and Realtor at Mueller Austin. Get in touch if you want to learn more about homes at Mueller.