Keep Brodie Wild

Dear Mayor Leffingwell and City Council Members, You now have in hand many letters from Austin residents asking you to rescind Ordinance #20080605-043. The ordinance gives special permission for a dense construction project on the Bethany Mission plat on the south side of Slaughter Lane between Brodie Lane and Wolftrap Drive. The site abuts Brodie Wild, a sensitive, city-owned tract of Water Quality Protection Land located in the Slaughter Creek watershed and the Barton Springs Recharge Zone. The Brodie Sink Tributary crosses the site's eastern portion. Dye tests by the City of Austin Watershed Protection and Development Review Department show that runoff into Brodie Wild sinkholes goes directly into the creek system and appears in Barton Springs less than 40 hours later. The site is now owned by Walters Southwest, Inc., which the City contends has "vested rights" to use the land for construction of a 272-unit apartment complex that fails to comply with city regulations meant to protect the watershed and Barton Springs. These "vested rights" are said to have been codified by a special ordinance granted in 1998 to then-owners Bethany Lutheran Church and renewed in 2008. The 2008 ordinance states: "The [City] Council has the inherent authority under the Austin City Charter and the Texas Constitution to consider and resolve the competing interests and values at issue when a person asserts vested rights to develop property without complying with city regulations. The Council may and should require compliance with city regulations when the public benefit from compliance clearly outweighs the hardship or loss to a person with an interest in development." To resolve the question of whether the public benefit of requiring adherence to city regulations in this case outweighs the potential hardship or loss to Walters Southwest, Inc., please consider the following facts: A. Potential hardship or loss to Walters Southwest, Inc. -- Walters Southwest is a major corporation with substantial holdings. In 2003, referring to just one of its many huge projects, a $75 million dollar mixed-use development in Southwest Austin, owner Bill Walters was quoted as follows in the Austin Business Journal: "This is huge for Austin...This is one of the biggest things going on in the market right now." According to the Austin Business Journal issue of 11-09-2005, the company during that period had decided to focus on "master planned developments in South Austin, Sunset Valley and Bastrop." The company today owns (or has sold at a profit) numerous large, lucrative, completed construction projects as well as valuable landholdings and in-progress projects across the Austin area. Just a few of these in the South Austin area alone are: Sunset Valley Village, a 300-acre retail shopping center in Sunset Valley recently expanded at a cost of $30 million; a 52 single-family-home project just east of Sunset Valley Village; a multi-acre site on Brodie Lane just north of Davis Lane; and a master-planned community that potentially could contain more than 1 million square feet of construction just south of Southpark Meadows in the valuable I-35 corridor. Clearly, the small proportionate loss the developer would incur from halting or altering this apartment complex project to conform to city code intended to protect the general public would be very minor for the company. Such a relatively small loss to one huge firm can hardly be said to outweigh the interests of the entire citizenry of the Austin area (and visitors to this area) in the preservation of Barton Springs, as well as that of hundreds of Oak Parke and Shady Hollow families in preserving the quality of life in their single-family-dwelling zoned area. If Walters Southwest, Inc., ended or retooled this project to conform to city code and protect the watershed and Barton Springs, the negligible loss to the firm would clearly be no more than a decimal fractional percent of its total holdings. B. Public benefit to proper enforcement of compliance with city regulations: 1. Single-family private homes abutting the construction site for the 272-apartments will not drop in property value by thousands of dollars, hurting the owners' nest-eggs and modest assets, which are proportionately very significant to each of them in terms of personal wealth in contrast to the small significance of the loss to developer Walters Southwest, Inc. 2. Traffic on Brodie and Slaughter Lanes and Wolftrap Drive, which surround the site, will not be increased by hundreds of cars. This is a key point. Bowie High School campus is just across Wolftrap lane from the Mission Bethany plat on the west side. At least twice daily when school is in session, traffic in that area is already clogged with hundreds of vehicles, including the cars of students, staff, and area residents, as well as school buses. If several hundred more vehicles are added to the mix, the City may need to perform expensive assessments and add traffic lights, turn lanes, and a variety of upgrades in order to prevent traffic accidents and fatalities, especially on behalf of the many very young, inexperienced drivers from Bowie High. 3. Brodie Wild sinkholes will be protected from polluted runoff from the planned 650,000 square feet of impervious cover (buildings and parking lots) that does not conform to protective city code; the burden of pollution on Barton Springs will not be increased from this environmentally sensitive site; and Barton Springs can live on. Barton Springs is a huge public asset as long as it is preserved in its present state. For example, a marketing brochure touting economic growth prospects, Hill Country real estate, and "outdoor lifestyles in Central Texas" quotes this passage from National Geographic Adventure magazine: "Within Zilker Park's 358 acres lies Barton Springs, one of the crown jewels of Texas. The 3-acre pool is fed from underground springs and the water maintains an average 68 degrees year round." 4. Air quality in the area will not suffer from the addition of hundreds of vehicles to the local environment. Noise and light pollution will not increase, and the quiet, shady greenspace that adjoins Brodie Wild and provides a haven for Hill Country wildlife will be preserved. Austin families living in areas zoned for single-family dwellings make a personal investment in a non-urban quality of life when they take on the responsibility of a mortgage. This interest was ignored by earlier City Council members when, with no public notice and no opportunity for citizen input, they held a closed session and passed this special ordinance favoring a developer and ignoring the interests of affected citizens. The City zones areas for single-family dwellings for a reason: a desirable quality of life for responsible, middle-class families. City code sets impervious cover and other limits on construction on sensitive watershed land for a reason: the public good of the residents of Austin; their right to safe, acceptable water quality; and their enjoyment of the jewel that is Barton Springs. The idea that a relatively very small loss to one rich developer could outweigh these overarching public considerations is patently absurd. It is therefore your duty as City Council to rescind Ordinance # 20080605-043 immediately. Sincerely,
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