KCRag Forum

According to the Austin Business Journal they have 18,000 housing units under construction, another 2,000 about to start and more soon to follow.

'Rent in the Central Business District averages $2.51 per square foot.'

Here in downtown KC we have lending underwriters saying they are nervous because they don't think we can fill all the 2,800 apartments being built, at $1.30-1.85 psf Argggh.

http://m.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/re ... -soon.html

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Visit Austin every few years and find it to still be a giant college town, missing the breadth and depth of a real city. Outside the outrageous traffic many from larger cities complain about lack of big city amenities (that KC has), freeways, pro sports, PAC type centers/arena, amusement park, other urban districts outside downtown, etc. Is a fun college town that is growing into a modern city but it still doesn't feel like a 'city', then again Dallas and Houston don't have the depth of Midwest/Eastern cities either. My younger brother went to UT and said he outgrew it. An older sister lived there for 7 years and also wanted to eventually get out of the college mentality - she's into the arts and moved to KC, feeling the arts here are more mature and established. Neither like what Austin has become lately. I do like the Texas roadhouse 'thang' they have though and lots of great bars/restaurants - and the best breakfast tacos/burritos.

Many say Austin is growing too fast for its own good - not something I'd like to see happen to KC, though a bit faster pace in city core would be nice.

Austins boom is fairly unsatisfying from an asthetics standpoint. It appears to be as earthling stated, a hypertrophied college town. New condo buildings going in on streets with no sidewalks, a lack of neighborhood business districts, etc etc. It's just not the same as seeing a nice new wide clean sidewalk being poured in front of new urban infill in a midwestern city, or seeing the facade of an early twentieth century commercial building being immaculately cleaned and tuckpointed.

I've been to Austin several times over the past few months. I like it for what it is but most people love it because they're supposed to. I was telling a friend there about some things happening in KC and he said "have you spent much time in Austin?". As if I wasn't clued in to how wonderful Austin is over KC. The traffic is terrible. The lone highway, 35, barely moves. They have an 8 month summer so there's little in the way of seasons. A friend that left after 2 years called it "the hottest place on the planet". Still, I wish we had their hotels and condo development. Our slow growth has given us better architecture and planning. And Texans shudder when they're told their cities are not beautiful. They aren't.

I liked the idea of Austin when it was a kind of weird, sleepy large college town. Sort of a lazy underachieving version of Portland, good food, tubing/swim holes, a hazy "eternal summer" vibe. There's sort of a weird dissonance/ conflict now between what it was, and wherever it's going, and the soul of the town wasn't built for that.

I'd never visited Austin (aside from driving through it several times on 35, which was a nightmare) until a couple weeks ago. I didn't really "get" it, I guess. Seemed like a pretty nice place altogether, but I wasn't blown away. Maybe my expectations were set too high from years of hearing people fawn over it. I had a similar reaction to San Antonio the first time I went there. My favorite thing about the trip was at the airport, watching a BA Dreamliner land and taxi to the gate. That was cool, especially since I had no idea BA had direct flights between Austin and London. That's pretty cool.

I guess I left feeling like Austin is a very cool city... for being in Texas.

I have 2 kids at UT so I go to Austin at least 8-10X per year. One kid loves it although that is waning, and the other hates Austin and would transfer but UT is good for their major.

I don't see the allure of Austin. The older part of the city around the university is kind of eclectic and there is a nice restaurant/entertainment scene there, DT and along South Congress but the rest of the city is same old Texas sprawl and Austin has a particularly bad sprawl problem. Being located at the foot of the Balcones escarpment, the city grows linearly SW-NE at the foot of the escarpment which parallels I-35 and there's only room for 1 real highway (other highways parallel I-35 in the newer parts of the city but they are smaller and equally as bad in terms of traffic). Around the university, a car is a major impediment, but elsewhere in the city, you absolutely need a car and the traffic is terrible.

As an aside, to cut traffic on I-35, the city tries to get people to use a recently built alternate toll road oriented SW-NE but south of I-35 in the poorer part of town but nobody wants to pay the toll and its kind of out of the way for most - so, in typical Texas fashion, the authorities raises the speed limit to 85 mph to entice use. That's madness on an urban highway.

Natural selection?

harbinger911 wrote: KC's Districts are amazing, but the nodes are too disenfranchised and disparate of each other.

KC's biggest problem in a nutshell. Condense our various districts into a single contiguous area and it competes with any other city on every level (w/ the necessary transit options that would come with the density)

this was probably resolved three eons ago, but whats up with the field by midtown marketplace? it's like a kick in the junk on top of everything wrong with midtown marketplace.

warwickland wrote:this was probably resolved three eons ago, but whats up with the field by midtown marketplace? it's like a kick in the junk on top of everything wrong with midtown marketplace.

the school district owns it. that should explain everything right there.

It is part of Foreign Language Academy - their playground/athletic fields.

KC's biggest problem in a nutshell. Condense our various districts into a single contiguous area and it competes with any other city on every level (w/ the necessary transit options that would come with the density)

I think this is what has me most encouraged by KC. While the disconnect between valuable/active/desirable nodes is incredibly frustrating, it would seem to be an issue that is more easily solvable (i.e. less time, population, and resources) than in just about any city in the country with comparable issues.

RE: the urban core, we're really talking Brookside/Waldo-ish to river, stateline to Troost (may change someday but not likely soon) as a contiguous, desirable urban fabric. That is a relatively small area with almost zero industrial or freeway scars, little wholesale clearance, and no real high-crime "don't ever go there" type areas. And it's aligned almost entirely along a strict, narrow, connectable n/s axis.

Of course, the dual blessings of small size and connectability don't mean squat, except ease of auto mobility, unless we start seeing big chunks of investment fill in the gaps.

Personally, I would love to see more neighborhood level retail in this city (West Plaza/Hyde Park especially), and find the lack of "destination" type neighborhoods (i.e. the "new" Westside) this city's biggest weakness.

"Austin has experienced spectacular rates of growth in recent decades, growing by more than 20 percent between 2000 and 2010. Among quickly growing cities, however, Austin was the only that also saw a decline in African-American population."

http://kut.org/post/austins-only-fast-g ... zI.twitter

I had to post this humdinger of a building being developed in Austin just so we know we aren't alone. Notice, its 12 stories of parking garage with a 10 story building on top (Similar to our Plaza office building under development). Even in Austin's "hot" economy they are still getting this thing. There is a reason these kinds of building are going up in KC/Austin and not Denver. We can look forward to more of these monstrosities if we don't develop better transit.

https://405colorado.com/

Good lord that thing is hideous.

KC_JAYHAWK wrote:Good lord that thing is hideous.

You are not lying. Pretty hideous.

god, i'm so over austin.

I think the first time I ever heard of Austin was when Dell opened shop there. I thought "Austin? Really?"