VMU on South Lamar.

I write a bunch about everyone else’s neighborhood so I ought to explain what happened with my neighborhood’s VMU application.

I live within the boundaries of the South Lamar Neighborhood Association.  SLNA’s VMU overlay district includes most of the properties on the east/southeast side of South Lamar from Oltorf to Ben White Boulevard.

My neighborhood association agreed to leave most of the properties within the VMU district.  It asked to opt out three properties on “iconic” grounds:  Matt’s El Rancho, the Walgreen’s/Taco Xpress site (guess which of these two was the icon), and the Broken Spoke (collectively, Tract 6 and 11).  I don’t agree with this business of opting out favored establishments, but I didn’t complain about it.  These icons are not going anywhere and they’ll be able to get VMU later if they want it.  I didn’t feel like wasting my energy on a purely hypothetical debate which I would have lost anyway.

I did disagree with two of my neighborhood’s other recommendations.  First, it asked to opt out all the properties between Bluebonnet and Kinney Road (Tracts 4 and 5).   Second, it asked to opt out of the parking reductions and relaxed dimensional standards across the board.

Our disagreements boiled down to this:  The neighborhood leadership wanted to opt out the properties between Bluebonnet and Kinney because they back up to single-family homes.  I did not, and do not, think that’s a good enough reason, particularly when the tracts include a half-abandoned car lot and a shuttered brake-repair shop.  (To be fair, there are some pretty useful businesses on this stretch, including an AM/PM animal hospital which has accepted several large donations on behalf of my cat.)

I also disagreed with the leadership on opting out of the reduced parking and dimensional standards, particularly for the tracts south of Manchaca.  These tracts include the giant strip mall at Ben White and other tracts isolated from residential properties.  I didn’t think there was even a colorable argument that the parking reductions would cause any problem on these tracts.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Planning Commission voted to opt out only the “iconic” tracts and to apply the reduced parking/dimensional standards across the board.

City Council followed the Planning Commission’s recommendation on first reading.  I thought that was an important signal to other neighborhoods (particularly Zilker) that tracts will not be opted out merely because they are adjacent to single family homes. Alas, on second and third readings last Wednesday, Council opted out Tract 4, the properties between Kinney and Iva.  There was intense neighborhood opposition to VMU on this tract, and the leaders apparently lobbied Council members (or at least Brewster) between first and second readings.

The map shows the final disposition of the tracts.  The VMU tracts are bordered in green and the opt-out tracts in red.

This was not a perfect outcome.  But, all in all, we ended up with a good VMU district.

N.B.  I should add that my neighborhood revised its recommendation between the Planning Commission and City Council hearings.  Its revised recommendation was to opt out only the “iconic” tracts and tracts 4 & 5, to apply the parking reductions/relaxed dimensional standards to the tracts south of Manchaca (more or less), and to exempt the properties north of Manchaca from the relaxed dimensional standards (more or less).