Austin is famous for its greenspace in and around the city, as well as the city’s commitment to preservation and environmental causes.
This is a good thing, and it’s a big part of what makes Austin such a great place to live.
But not everybody has been happy with the city’s efforts. Residents of the mostly minority and less affluent East side have criticized the city in the past, saying it spends more money on parks and springs in the more affluent, and whiter, part of Austin west of Interstate 35.
Ah. The race card. Of course.
It couldn’t be that there is more and better preservation opportunities on the West side of Austin (the hill country starts on the Western half of the city)? Or it couldn’t be that citizens on the West side have been more proactive in setting aside land for preservation for a longer time?
__________
The Austin American-Statesman is touting a new deal as a “green win in East Austin“, whereby a tiny 5.9-acre plot of land was purchased by the city of Austin and will be saved from development:
The lot, a small jungle behind a fast-food restaurant and a pawn shop off Oak Springs Drive, is full of weeds, litter, and an impressive set of oak trees and elephant ears. Oak Springs itself springs from here, nourishing a wetland and flowing south to feed Boggy Creek.
Protecting the lot, which is across the street from playing fields and a library, quickly became a cause among East Austin preservation groups
This does sound like a win at first glance, and I’m glad that the 5.9 acres will be preserved as green space. The City of Austin is on the verge of spending about $1.4 million to save the lot, which features natural springs and old oak trees.
Except it’s really not a win for the city.
The city is about to spend $1.4 million taxpayer dollars, which will turn an obscenely-healthy profit for the owners, East Austin Plaza LP. The company only paid $287,000 for the property in 2004, according to appraisal records. The land is currently valued at only $271,636, according to the county appraisal office.
By law, the city of Austin cannot pay more than the appraised value of the property.
So, to appease the East Austin preservation groups, the city went out and found a third party appraiser, who somehow determined that the property was worth 7x its actual value.
Hopefully this new appraisal will soon be available via an open records request. It will be interesting to see exactly who this third party appraiser is…and what, if any, ties they have to the previous property owner, the preservation groups, or various Council Members.
Is having a new inner-city 6-acre park a good thing? Undoubtedly. Is paying 7x more than the land is worth a good thing? No, it’s not.
Email This Post
⋅
Print This Post
Getting a third party was shady, but you are missing the bigger picture here. It is not the value of the land itself but the value of a live, clean creek running through the city. 1.4 million to preserve spring-fed headwaters is a deal even if it is merely an acre.
Cement on a corner with fast food restaurants or live water in August? That was the issue. I’m sure the city would have paid 5X the asking price regardless of location or demographics.
Having a third-party appraisal in land conservation purchases is standard. The City does this both West and East.
The TCAD appraisal is rarely, if ever, used as an actual appraisal in these matters because it is far too broad and lags significantly behind actual sales.
If conservation and preservation is the goal, then I’m just wondering if that $1.4 million couldn’t have purchased a much bigger tract of land somewhere else in our city.
I’m very familiary with how appraisals work, and that the tax appraisal value doesn’t necessisarily reflect market value. However, the $287K paid for that plot two years ago is a fair and accurate reflection of market value. And property values have not grown at 193.92% anywhere in Austin (which, if the $1.4 million reflects an accurate and true current market value, would be the growth rate on that plot over the last two years) .
Yes….having a park is good. The city should have been able to purchase that plot of land for substantially less. The same amount of money spent on that 6 acres should have been able to purchase 5-7 more preservable green spaces just like it.
Shockingly, I agree completely with Robbie, especially the last comment. People need to get past the reflexive approval of any greenspace purchase no matter what.
If I were you, I would be attending the City Council meetings while this issue is being debated. Furthermore, I would request, under the open records act, a copy of the high appraisal and for that matter all appraisals related to this piece of property. Then, if you have an issue which you believe needs debate, request to speak at the Council meeting BEFORE the council approves the purchase and ask some serious questions. I’ve been to dozens of city council meetings ( in Kansas) and served on a city planning commission and it astonishes me how few people show up and speak up, other than the developers.
I always review city council and planning commission agendas available on line prior to the meetings. And, if necessary, I attend the meetings. And, it is wise to review the City Comprehensive Plan to see what the city has in store for zoning, development, etc., which is probably also available on-line. Trust me, it’s too late to gripe after decisions have been made that affect your neighborhood.
Bring stink bombs!
Shame on you, Robbie. How could you advocate denying the poor citizens of Austin the opportunity to have a park with all kinds of trees and bushes where they can conduct their drug deals and their contract hits on their gang rivals, away fromt he prying eyes of those so-called decent minopity citizens who are so browbeaten they want to live like is damn ol’ gringos.
And you mistakenly come to the consclusion that the land would not be worth the money? Come on now, just look at the infusion of all the money from meth and crack sells that will be flowing in to the downtown slumlords, crooked cops and other officials, rip-off mom and pop stores that make Herrods of London look like Wal-Mart, pawnshop owners.
And don’t forget the prostitutes who will be a regular feature of this I am sure to be beautiful park area, who will be a very vital park of luring rich young horny gringos and business people to the area for that extra infusion of cash, and oh yeah, blood.
Very nice post and great follow up comment. The blinders put on by the Austin community for any open space purchase are truly absurd. Just last year, the voters gave Travis County carte blanche to purchase over 2000 acres of Reimers Ranch for a park when all the County really wanted or will ever open to the public was around 500 acres. The rest will end up having to be sold to developers and then used for some other reasons. Doubt me? Just watch.
We have the same problem in LA. Tax payer money used to buy property for way more than the market price. The property is then subsequently restricted and the public denied access. Or, if they are allowed access, it’s only if they pay $$$ to rent. We have some “environmentalists” living like millionaires at the tax payer’s expense. What a crock!
A couple of points -
1) East Austin has been historically discriminated against, both in terms of public perception as well as policy, dating at least back to the 1928 master plan, which designated the area east of East Avenue (now I-35) as industrial – including a number of “undesirable” industrial uses – the plan actually used the word.
While they didn’t come right out and say it, they effectively designated the area as “black and brown” by building the only (then segregated) schools, public housing developments, and other public infrastructure for minorities in the area as well.
2) The (to some extent still persistent) perceptions that East Austin is any less safe than the rest of the city are, for the most part, unfounded. Crime statistics just don’t bare it out – although there remain pockets of high crime, there are also some houses selling for upwards of $300,000 in the Holly neighborhood. The 78722 ZIP code has a higher median income than the median for the city as a whole. The black population of East Austin is shrinking rapidly – both due to emigration and – to put it crudely – death. Incomes are rising. East Austin is beginning, in many ways, to resemble the rest of Austin, and the changes are happening at an extremely rapid pace. (Mr. Kelley, who posted above alluding to drug deals and other shady practices on the east side, ultimately struck me as a poorly disguised racist – in much the same way that “inner-city” is often a code word for “black, poor, and dangerous”, and the racial component is rarely dropped). It might be about time that folks begin to take cognizance of the realities of East Austin today, rather than the perceptions of the 20th century.
3) To imply that the land on the west side of the Balcones Fault is somehow better worth preserving doesn’t seem to hold any objective backing, as best I can tell – yes, the hills and rocks are interesting to look at, but a) we should appreciate ecological diversity and preserve all types of land, b) as long as the city is committed to providing neighborhood parks – not just destination parks like Zilker or Town Lake – then they should make an effort to provide them equitably to all citizens. In an ideal world, that would mean that all users would some form of public greenspace within easy walking distance – where I would argue that the standard for walkability should be an 8-year-old child, or an elderly citizen who requires a cane to walk, rather than just active and healthy adults and adolescents. That last point goes double until the city has a public transport system that is truly functional – and by functional I mean as equally if not more effective as a means of locomotion than private cars. Regarding both parks and rec and public transport, the city could learn an awful lot from Portland, OR.
4) Yes, 1.4M is an awful lot of money for the land – might they not be compensating for lost future revenue streams in some form or fashion? (woefully, I’m unfortunately not as knowledgeable on the details of public land acquisition as I likely should be to attempt a foray into this discussion…) Perhaps we should wait until the December 14th council meeting to find out all the details on this deal.
In any case, overpaying or not, this presents quite possibly one of the greatest opportunities the city has had to create a true gem of a park on the east side – something that’s been lacking for quite a while now.
Sorry for not putting this one into the last post, but:
“Seventeen trees would have been cut down, according to the site plan, including an oak with a 58-inch diameter. The spring would essentially have been closed off, stoppered like a hydrant.” (From the Friday Statesman)
An oak that size has got to be ancient – how can you value that? And surely we can use the green space more than a Family Dollar store; it’s much more likely to improve property values in the area (actually, the effects of the park in that regard could offset other property tax losses, although the effects of parks on neighboring land values are a little hard to sort out of the other factors), and the area already has plenty of low-end retail trade. What’s needed are banks and grocery stores… but that’s another story.
You’re not going to get a true “gem” of a park out of that 5.9 acres. But East Austin does already have several “gem” parks (and some, while not quite gems, are nice neighborhood parks):
Walter Long Munincipal Park (replete with a big lake)
McKinney Falls State Park (perhaps the nicest park in the entire city, and only 6 miles to downtown)
Mable Davis Park
Patterson Park
Fiesta Gardens
Kealing Park and Pool
The Boggy Creek Greenbelt parks (Downs, Rosewood, Zaragosa)
Givens Park
Metz Park
Montopolis Park
Civitian Park
Jordan Park
And quite a few others, too
Then there’s Bartholomew Park, where I used to play a lot of disc golf…but it’s widely considered by the Austin disc golf community to be a bad place to play because of the frequent number of burglarized cars ion the parking lot, the litter, and less-than-desirable park
usersloiterers.Again, I’m not arguing against building more parks on the East side (to add to the numerous parks already on the East side — everyone’s making it sound like there are no parks over there already), I’m arguing against this blatant rip off of the tax payers to appease “East side environmental groups”.
The property is actually worth a bit more than 1.4 million. I am a real estate investor in that area.