Violet Crown Community Works Meeting

Violet Crown Community Works Meeting will be held at the North Village Library Branch from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM on July 30th.

Violet Crown Community Works, the group that brings you the Violet Crown Festival and is sponsoring the Wall of Welcome on Woodrow Avenue, is having its next general membership meeting on Monday, July30 from 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM in the North Village Library Branch. All residents of Crestview and Brentwood are members of the organization, and there are no annual dues. Your participation is very much welcomed and appreciated!

The purpose of this meeting will be to adopt new bylaws and approve the budgets and plans for the 2008 Violet Crown Festival and the completion of the Wall of Welcome. We also will be discussing openings on the board of directors and opportunities for our neighbors to shape the organization’s future. This is a great way to meet your neighbors and get more involved in fun things that make Crestview and Brentwood special and unique.

I am requesting permission from the list serve moderator to post our amended by-laws to the list serve so that all of our members may review and provide comments before our vote on the 30th. You may also email me directly and I will send an electronic copy to you.

All the best,
Amy McGeady
Resident of Karen Avenue & VCCW President

http://www.violetcrownfestival.com/

Ice Cream Social was a Success!

Check out the pictures from the Ice Cream Social.
Click Here

Many residents showed up to hear Bayou Cajun music, eat good ice cream, and socialize with fellow neighbors. Thank you Crestview for being such a great neighborhood.

Crestview Steering Committee VMU Response

After holding many meetings to review the City information, review the Crestview Neighborhood Plan, meet with concerned residents, walk/review properties, and question the city, the steering committee voted to maintain and honor the negotiations made during the neighborhood planning between the city and residents of the Crestview Neighborhood. Thus the VMU overlay recommendation does not include any property along Burnet Road between Justin Lane & Anderson and any property along Lamar between Banyon and Anderson. All other city proposed VMU overlay areas remain as detailed in the original VMU maps (downloaded from the city's web site).

Below is the Crestview Steering Committee cover letter/meeting notes to the city about VMU in Crestview.

CRESTVIEW COVER LETTER FOR VMU RECOMMENDATIONS

This supplement to Crestview’s VMU recommendations is an integral part of the recommendations themselves. There are many unresolved issues and unanswered questions that need attention prior to moving forward with VMU in the Crestview area. Many of the issues revolve around infrastructure needs. The city has not yet responded to Crestview’s request for information concerning various types of infrastructure needed to support VMU in north central Austin including roadways, water and wastewater, electricity, schools, parkland and libraries to name just a few. It would be appropriate to revisit VMU in 18 to 24 months once the city has responded to basic concerns over infrastructure and presented a plan explaining how and when infrastructure improvements would be funded and implemented.

Basis of recommendations

• Based on results of surveys conducted during Neighborhood Planning Process with 400 respondents (reference: Appendix Six, page 121 of the Crestview/Wooten Neighborhood Plan, April, 2004)
  
  58% said no additional apartments should be build
  87% said less than 100 apartments per year
  90% wanted no more than 700 additional units built
  76% opposed mixed use
  
  
• The 70 acre Crestview Station property build-out is currently underway with a proposed 1472 housing units, which will increase the housing in Crestview by 87 %, nearly doubling the density of the neighborhood. This may well represent the largest density increase in any central Austin neighborhood. Moving forward with VMU at this time would only magnify the impact on the surrounding community. It would be advisable to evaluate the impact of Crestview Station once it is built out prior to embarking on additional densification in order to maximize the beneficial elements of growth.

Our Neighborhood Plan represented compromises and agreements made between the City of Austin staff and the Crestview residents. Page 29 of the Crestview/Wooten Neighborhood Plan, Land Use Development Recommendation states: “Focus more intense commercial and mixed use development along Lamar Blvd.” We agreed to greater development along Lamar Blvd in exchange for lower levels of development on Burnet Road. The land use map (zoning) developed in the Neighborhood Plan was determined by a review of each individual property along the corridors by COA staff and Crestview residents. As a result, Crestview’s recommendation for VMU development on Burnet Road is limited, consistent with the neighborhood plan.

Crestview is already committed to additional densification as evidenced by the development of Crestview Station.

We’d like to think that we’ve done our fair share of adding additional housing, not only in our own neighborhood area but in the larger north central Austin area as well. We can’t convince the residents that additional growth is possible until we see the impact of Crestview Station and the city’s plans for concurrent infrastructure improvements.

The option to opt-in is always there. We’d like to defer additional densification until more specific data is available about the impact of the Crestview Station build-out.

We’d like to see Crestview go through the first phase of densification (with the Crestview Station) before moving forward with any additional densification with VMU.

As we develop the corridors on Anderson Lane and Burnet Road, the increased traffic will impede the flow along these corridors. This may necessitate a future widening of these roads, which could impact any VMU developments along these roads.

VMU is presented as an overlay, and as a result, doesn’t allow the residents to have input into development on the properties within this overlay.

A broad brush-stroke of VMU overlays does not allow the review of development for specific properties. The VMU overlay provides for a higher density for the developers, which increases the selling value of the property, thereby reducing the potential for low-cost housing based on the selling price.

If Lamar Blvd. and Burnet Road are to be true transportation corridors, increasing development on those roadways will limit the traffic flow and be counter productive in terms of traffic movement on these roadways.