Prepare for Take Off
Airport Redevelopment Serves as State Model
by Ann Holdsworth
Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the April 2007 issue of Fiscal Notes.
For 70 years, planes flew in and out of Austin's Robert Mueller Municipal Airport. Now, the former airport's most notable arrivals will be 10,000 new residents landing over the next 15 years.
What was once 711 acres of runways, terminals and hangers will transform into offices, stores, apartments, houses, parks, a lake and the Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas. The first buildings opened in spring 2007.
"This project will create between $1 billion and $1.3 billion in taxable value [and] 10,000 permanent jobs, as well as 10,500 to 11,000 construction jobs during the build-out," said Matt Whelan, senior vice president for Catellus Development Group.
Mueller's large, undeveloped parcels, located in the heart of one of America's fastest-growing cities and real estate markets, make the site a perfect location for mixed development, said Brian Dolezal, a spokesman for TateAustin, a public relations firm working on the Mueller project.
The redevelopment will have 3.8 million square feet of office space, 650,000 square feet of retail space, 140 acres of parkland and 475,000 square feet of medical facilities, Dolezal said.
Robert Mueller Airport, named after a former city commissioner, opened in 1930 but closed in 1999 to make way for the larger Austin Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA). The Mueller site was open farmland in the 1920s but was too close to a growing downtown by the 1990s for the airport to stay.
The city also capitalized on the military's closure of Bergstrom Air Force Base in 1991. That freed up more than 3,200 acres of landing strips, buildings and open land, all eight miles from downtown Austin.
After opening ABIA in 1999, the city of Austin and the Austin Film Society converted former hangars and terminals at Mueller into studio production stages and production offices, known as Austin Studios.
Since 2000, movies such as "Miss Congeniality," "Man of the House," "Secondhand Lions" and "Friday Night Lights," along with various TV shows, music videos and commercials, were filmed in part at the former airport.
Floor Plans Galore
The residents of the development's 4,600 residential units will live and work alongside some of Hollywood's most famous names, Dolezal said.
"There will be a variety of residential product types, including traditional yard houses with the majority having access from the alleys, meaning the garages are at the back of the house," Dolezal said. "There will be row houses, like the brownstones in New York and Chicago, and houses which look like large mansions, but will be divided into four to six individual houses for families."
The Mueller houses will range from 1,400 square feet to 2,300 square feet and will sell for between $200,000 and $600,000, Dolezal said. Twenty-five percent of all housing built, however, will be priced $120,000 to $160,000 and will be reserved for people who earn up to 60 percent of Austin's median income. In 2006, that figure was $69,600 for a family of four, according to the city of Austin.
"One group targeted is seniors and affordable [housing], and one being families with a wide range of needs, such as single mothers or families that have extraordinary medical bills or with other issues they have that creates a strain on them financially where they just need a little assistance," Whelan said.
The 25 percent of houses that will be designated as affordable housing will be mixed in with other types of residential units, Whelan said.
"They won't be sequestered," he said. "They'll be integrated and dispersed throughout the community, so you wouldn't be able to tell just driving down the street. That way there isn't just one area that has all [the affordable houses]."
In December 2006, Catellus and the city of Austin announced the homebuilders chosen for the first phase of the residential build-out, but construction won't begin until mid 2007, Dolezal said.
However, Catellus and Texas-based Simmons Vedder and Co. will begin constructing a 422,000-square-foot apartment complex in early 2007, Dolezal said.
The apartments will range from $925 to $2,100 a month, Dolezal said.
Leading the Charge
The first building to open under the redevelopment plan will be the Dell Children's Medical Center in June 2007, which will replace the Children's Hospital of Austin (CHOA) at Brackenridge Hospital. CHOA has served 46 counties in Central Texas since 1988, but it is now too small, said Michele Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Dell Children's Foundation.
"For some time now, the hospital-the only dedicated pediatric facility in the region-has experienced overcrowding given increased demand and need in our community," Gonzalez said. "In addition, expansion at the current site is simply not an option, as the facility is land-locked."
Funded by the Seton Family of Hospitals and private donations, the new Children's Center will increase the number of beds available from 149 to 170, and it will include family lounges, an inpatient rehabilitation gym and a 2.5 acre garden, Gonzalez said.
The medical center will be the first of several buildings to make up a pediatric medical complex that will later include a pediatric trauma center and a second Austin Ronald McDonald House, which will house families while their children undergo medical treatment, Gonzalez said.
Doctoring Options
The redevelopment project is already attracting a lot of attention, Dolezal said.
"We've had people register through our Web site indicating an interest in living at Mueller, and that's before we've done any significant marketing of actual homes," Dolezal added.
But it's not just the housing that's enticing people to the Mueller redevelopment. The new medical center's alliance with the University of Texas (UT) System also is attracting attention.
When fourth-year medical student Meisa Owen was applying to residency programs, she was not seriously considering Austin hospitals. But after hearing that the Dell Children's Medical Center and UT were teaming up, Owen scheduled an interview.