Zoning and You!

Jackie O'Keefe has done a wonderful job chairing the zoning function for the Allandale Neighborhood Association.  She will still be here, and active, but she'll be moving on to other involvements, and I'll become chair on zoning.  Jackie and I met on this yesterday, and Gretchen Vaden, our President, and I talked on the phone today.

I am learning on zoning.  I look forward to Jackie's good advice, and the advice of any of you. 

Here are a few things I think I know:

1) Zoning is something cities use to restrict land use.  No one wants high-rise apartments interspersed among single family homes, or noisy manufacturing in a hospital zone.  There are different kinds of zoning, but zoning applies throughout Austin.

2) Zoning is complex.  I'll have a later email so that all of you can learn some of what I am learning from the city www sites on zoning.  SF-1 (single family residential) is one of the least intensive uses.  Many of us own single family homes, in areas zoned SF-1.

3) Development and re-development will be coming to Allandale.  Many of us are in Central Austin, and there are incentives for more intensive development in Central Austin.  Some proposed development we will probably want to encourage, and work with; other proposed developments we probably will want to oppose.  It is not an all Yes or all No business, and since we are diverse in our membership and interests, we will not always agree on what is good, and what not so good, but we need to work together, as neighbors, and as an association, as proposed projects appear.  The new Amy's Ice Cream at Burnet and Northland is, in my opinion, an example of how development can enhance our neighborhood.

4) Developers, and land owners, when requesting zoning changes, almost invariably request a change from a less-intensive use, to a more-intensive use.  That's understood.  What also needs to be understood, by all of us, is that zoning rights go with the land.  If we as a neighborhood support a "nice" landowner in getting a more intensive zoning for his property, two things that could be damaging could follow as consequences.  (1) the landowner could sell the property to someone not so nice, and the new zoning rights would transfer with that property, and (2) other landlords, similarly situated, could invoke precedent to make the case that their properties, similarly situation, should, in all fairness, also be allowed this more intensive use.  So, we need to beware of what we approve, and where zoning requests per Allandale are, in the approval process by city council.  The Austin City Council has the final word..

5) We are the eyes and ears to be sure that zoning is enforced.  If a new building is going up, it should have a city permit in full-view, and it should be going up in accordance with the existing zoning for that tract of land.  If a house has single-family residential zoning, and someone is redoing that house into multiple apartments, I need to know that, and we as a neighborhood need to blow the whistle on it EARLY, with the city.  Zoning laws are rules to work within.  If someone is operating outside the rules, the whistle needs to be blown on them EARLY.

Let me learn from you.  Let's see your responses to this posting.

Best regards,
John Keohane
(incoming) Zoning Chair
Allandale Neighborhood Association
5702 Wynona Avenue
Austin, TX  78756
(512) 371-3853
keohane@prodigy.net