South Central Waterfront Walkabout

Walking tour with waterfront experts (and a marching band!) to learn about issues and opportunities as inevitable changes come to this 97 acre area of our waterfront.

The City of Austin will host a walking tour near Lady Bird Lake to launch the South Central Waterfront Initiative.

The “Waterfront Walkabout” from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Jan. 11, will feature knowledgeable guides and local music from the Urban Achieves Brass Band.  Attendees should meet in the lobby at One Texas Center, 505 Barton Springs Road, and be prepared to walk 1.5 miles outside for about two hours. 

The walking tour kicks off a series of community events to engage Austinites in developing a vision to help guide public and private development over the next 20-plus years.

 “The river that runs through Downtown has long been one of Austin’s most beloved features,” said Brooke Bailey, who chairs the Waterfront Planning Advisory Board. “We aim to develop a cohesive vision that optimizes community benefits, including opening up the waterfront’s natural assets and beauty for everyone’s enjoyment.”

Waterfront Talkabout
The next scheduled event is a Waterfront Talkabout on Jan. 21 where speakers will present redevelopment recommendations and share examples of waterfront developments around North America that showcase great public spaces, sustainable green infrastructure, and equitable development.
 
The Talkabout at 7 p.m. at the Stateside at the Paramount, 719 Congress Ave., will feature:

• Harris Steinberg, director of PennPraxis who led the City of Philadelphia’s Creating a Civic Vision for the Central Delaware Riverfront master plan.
• John Fregonese, principal of Fregonese Associates and key consultant to the regional Sustainable Places Project.

Background
With growing redevelopment interest in the area, the Austin City Council adopted a resolution in August 2013 initiating a comprehensive small-area plan for the 97-acre area now known as the South Central Waterfront, which encompasses tracts south to Riverside Drive and Barton Springs Road, as well as land directly along the waterfront.

Two major planning efforts in the past two years have focused attention on the shore’s tremendous opportunities.

The first brought in national design experts, sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, serving on a Sustainable Design Assessment Team. Steinberg, who will be a featured speaker at the Jan. 21 public lecture, was the design leader of this effort. Existing challenges identified by the team include:

• Inadequate public access to the waterfront.
• Limited public green space along the shoreline.
• Large, unattractive, outdated surface parking lots and other auto-oriented uses.
• Huge “superblocks” that impede pedestrian access to the waterfront.
• Outdated and inadequate water quality protections.
• Poor mobility connections.

  To address these challenges, the Sustainable Design Assessment Team recommended how the area could potentially redevelop to achieve:

• Expanded and enhanced public space along the lakeshore.
• High-quality pedestrian connections to the shore and throughout the district.
• More sustainable, attractive and harmonious built environment.

The second planning effort was part of a regional Sustainable Places Project to assess impacts on quality of life of various redevelopment scenarios. Fregonese was the key consultant for the project.

To learn more about the initiative, visit www.austintexas.gov/waterfront