Lot size, light rail: Austin City Council seeks input on significant land code changes

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Nearly 200 people signed up to speak Thursday at the City of Austin’s first public hearing for several significant land development code (LDC) changes that could be coming your way.

Of those people, nearly 60 indicated they were against the proposals, more than 110 signed up to speak in support and several others indicated they were neutral.

If you missed it, you still have two open-house opportunities to learn about the proposals and ask questions:

• Wednesday, April 17: In-person event at the Austin Central Library, 710 W. Cesar Chavez St. from 6 to 8 p.m. Attendees can come and go during the event as their schedules allow.

• Saturday, April 20: Virtual event, 10 a.m. (Register on the LDC Updates website)

In May, Austin City Council is expected to vote on all of the below changes.

HOME phase two

After the first phase of the Home Options for Middle-income Empowerment (HOME) initiative was approved by Austin City Council late last year, the second phase is now being considered.

That first phase — which again, is already in place — allowed more units to be built on a single-family lot and allowed tiny homes to be considered one of those units, among several other changes. You can read more about those changes here.

The second phase of HOME focuses entirely on minimum lot size — meaning, how much land is required to put a single unit on it. The idea is that smaller lots will allow for the creation of more housing.

Right now in the City, most single-family lots are zoned so that you need a minimum of 5,750 square feet to build a single unit. The city is proposing that be dropped to 2,000 square feet — something officials with the planning department say is consistent with the policy outcome passed in phase one of HOME.

It’s worth noting that phase one and phase two of HOME don’t necessarily build on each other here. Only one single unit can be built on each 2,000-square-foot plot of land. To build condominiums or other similar structures approved in phase one, the lot size requirements remain the same.

Doesn’t make sense? Okay, we’ll break it down another way. Under phase one of the HOME initiative, you would need a 5,750-square-foot plot of land to build three townhouses on that single lot.

But to subdivide the lots and put a unit on each lot, you would need 6,000 square feet — breaking down to 2,000 square feet per lot.

Still not tracking? The City of Austin put together an explainer for you, which dropped Thursday. You can find it here.

Compatibility changes

The word “compatibility” as it relates to land development code may sound familiar to you because it’s something both City and state officials have tried to modify before, without much success.

Right now in the City, you can’t build very tall buildings next to single-family homes. We’ve told you previously that our city is more strict on that than most in Texas, which makes developing more dense housing near single-family homes difficult.

We like how Council Member Chito Vela of District 4 previously described compatibility as “a force field” around some homes. In the City, there’s a sliding scale of permissible height that extends up to 540 feet from a single-family property, “which is a huge area,” Vela said.

The proposed changes would include: ending compatibility at 75 feet from a single-family home, allowing for a sliding scale of height allowances between 10 and 75 feet, and requiring a landscape buffer between your single-family home and those taller buildings.

City staff said 50 feet is actually the standard in most major Texas cities. A bill filed by Senator Bryan Hughes during the most recent legislative session also would have stripped the radius allowed to just 50 feet in major Texas cities, but that bill did not pass.

Electric vehicle charging

The final land development code change you’re going to see on your purple postcard is one that works to spread electric vehicle charging stations out in our city and keep them from being concentrated in residential areas.

What you need to know as an Austinite, or an electric car owner, is that building electric vehicle charging stations could now be allowed in certain commercial zoning districts (less residential) including commercial highways and general commercial services zoning areas.

“Strategically permitting charging stations in commercial districts will give users accessible, convenient, and efficient access to charging infrastructure while providing development regulations that limit the use from interrupting the public realm or the walkability of an area,” the city’s website says.

You can find more details on that here.

ETOD: Project Connect phase one

Last but not least, roughly 40,000 mailers will be sent out to property owners along the proposed Project Connect line. The City is also sending those mailers to non-single-family properties within roughly a half mile of that area.

Expect them to be thick, more than 20 pages long, and have lots of maps in them. Planning staff confirmed those maps will let you know whether you’re directly impacted or getting the mailer because you’re in the general area.

The proposal there is for what’s called an Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) overlay. The goal of an ETOD is to encourage land along a transit corridor, like Project Connect, to support public transit — think dense housing so that people have access to that transit.

The ETOD would prohibit the building of things like gas stations, car washes and junk yards. City planning staff said it does not include drive-thru food establishments (your favorite burger joints are safe).

Planning staff also noted that state law requires the city to post certain language about that change which may read as a bit “dramatic.”

The proposal does not nix anyone’s existing home or business, although could impact whether some expansions or rebuilds — for business types no longer allowed under the overlay — can happen in the future.

“The changes will support our overall goal of providing the infrastructure needed to allow more people to get around town by train, bus, bike, scooter, or walking, and they will also improve Austin’s competitiveness when it comes to securing the federal funding vital to building our light rail system,” said Annick Beaudet, director of the City’s Project Connect Office.

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