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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > June > 19 > Entry
Update: City Council postpone actions on Zach zoning change
With a packed agenda on its hands, the Austin City Council last night postponed action on a proposed zoning ordinance change that would permit Zachary Scott Theatre to exceed current height limitations when they build a new theater at their West Riverside Dr. and S. Lamar Blvd. site.
Although the council had originally indicated it would discuss the item at 6 p.m, it was until 9:40 p.m. that any discussion began. Action will now by taken on the proposed zoning change at the July 24 council meeting.
As they planned their new 500-seat theater, Zach project managers alerted city staff that the stage house for the new venue would exceed the 60-foot zoning district height limit. Working with city staff, the project managers crafted a detail request to amend the zoning restrictions so that theater could build stage houses that would exceed zoning height limits by 33 percent. The new Zach theater needs a stage house between 75 and 80 feet tall.
But the neighbors squealed. Specifically, the Zilker Neighborhood Association and its president Jeff Jack, objected to the proposed amendment. Though the nearby Barton Place condo project going up on Barton Springs Road is slated to by 75 feet tall, apparently neighbors didn’t want Zach to be able to do the same.
Zach leaders are now working with Jack and the neighborhood association to re-word the request for the zoning amendment per Jack’s demand that the language of the amendment be restricted to Zach and “not be transferrable” to future theater building projects or set any kind of precedent for zoning amendments for future theater building projects.
Of course, there’s no saying what such a restrictive zoning ordinance might mean when, say, the Long Center begins working on its third planned theater.
Read the city background materials here
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By Bill Kleinebecker
June 21, 2008 9:01 PM | Link to this
If I were living in that neighborhood, I’d be proud of the excellent theaters that are going up in the neighborhood. And if those theaters get (inter)national renown, my buttons would be bursting.
It seems to me that many more people in the neighborhood are going to economically benefit from these theaters being there than are currently complaining.
By Sterling Price-McKinney
June 20, 2008 5:58 PM | Link to this
What a pity that the city “leaders” cannot see past the grumblings of a few grouchy residents of the area to enable a long-at-work institution to further the quality of it’s work.
This smacks of the same “caving in” which led the city to build the Long Center’s parking garage several levels too low to actually serve it’s purpose. We’ve already heard several versions of “If we had it to do all over again…”. Why cripple the general public for the satisfaction of a few well rehearsed neighborhood mouthpieces again?
It is not as if the footprint of the stagehouse will cover an area larger than a comparative breadbox. And it is certainly not close enough to other buildings to rob them of their legal quotient of sunlight and air.
Developments like Spring, Monarch, 360 and now Trammel Crow are rapidly filling in the north side of the river frontage where “Capitol View” angels once feared to tread. With The Bridges and other new chi-chi housing now filling up the south side, is it fair to impose unreasonable restrictions on one of the few quality-of-life things NOT being “built for profit”?
In an increasingly urban world, will we stunt the growth of one of Austin’s most reliable and outreaching art concerns, to maximize the views of the folks in apartment 4-E? Likely, Zach has added far more to the community than “they” ever will.
With all of the evolution taking place in the downtown area, I think it’s time for this kind of petty NIMBY-ism to go the way of the dinosaurs. It’s just a stagehouse for goodness sake, not another massive skyscraper. And this about building cities for the long term, not just another episode of “Flip This House”.