Northcross and the Supercenter

It's not a done deal. We continue to press on. In the last couple of weeks, while City staff review Lincoln's second site plan - one that has since been modified to include a smaller Supercenter, members of the ANA's Northcross Committee have let the City know our concerns have not changed. Northcross is no place for a Supercenter. We don't have the infrastructure nor the desire for a single retailer of that scale.

Members of the Northcross Committee have met with City staff twice and followed up the meetings with letters/emails. We also submitted a peer review of the initial traffic impact analysis (TIA) that was done by a traffic engineering firm, VRPA Technologies. What follows are the points we want considered in their review of the second site plan. Please contact city council members and let them know you want their response to these concerns. What follows is the text of a letter sent to city council members last weeek followed by a letter sent to city staff following a meeting on the subject:

June 11, 2006

Honorable Mayor Wynn and Council Members:

I am writing to you on behalf of the Allandale Neighborhood Association (ANA) Executive Committee with regard to the revised Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA) submitted by Lincoln Properties Company (LPC) for the Northcross Mall redevelopment. As you are aware, LPC recently submitted a revised TIA to the City of Austin stating that the proposed 192,000 square foot Wal-Mart Supercenter at Northcross Mall will reduce the forecasted number of trips by 20 percent, from 25,607 unadjusted daily vehicle trips to 20,602 unadjusted daily vehicle trips, causing none of the intersections surrounding Northcross Mall to fail. This finding strongly concerns ANA’s Executive Committee and its general membership, since it is counter-intuitive and contradicts the findings of the City of Austin staff, who have performed actual traffic counts at the Wal-Mart Supercenter at Ben White and IH 35. At this location, COA traffic counts exceed the volume forecasted in that store’s TIA by approximately 100 percent.

As a result, we believe that Lincoln Property Company has not acted in good faith, when submitting this revised TIA, and should submit a TIA to COA staff that accurately predicts the future volume of the store. The first step to achieving this goal is to base the traffic analysis on the findings of the August 2006 ITE Journal article (see attached), which demonstrated that Wal-Mart Supercenters in Texas and Oklahoma produced traffic volumes that greatly exceeded the volumes predicted by the ITE Handbook.  By making this adjustment to the methodology, LPC can produce a traffic forecast that is more likely to reflect reality, rather than simply using inaccurate figures to satisfy the COA’s TIA requirement.

Second, at the expense of the ANA, we contracted an independent engineering firm to conduct a peer review of the original TIA, which I have attached to this message. This review was performed by VRPA Technologies, a traffic engineering consulting firm  which has significant experience measuring the traffic impacts of Wal-Mart Supercenters. In their review, VRPA found that the level of service at four intersections surrounding Northcross Mall, including at Burnet   Road and Anderson Lane, will fail after the new facility opens. Even though the review was based on a 206,000 square foot store as opposed to the revised 192,000 square foot store, we are confident that the results would be the same. You will find the table showing a comparison of the LPC’s TIA results to the VRPA study on page 10 of the report.  A member of the ANA Executive Committee also provided a copy of this report to Victoria Hsu in the Watershed Protection and Development Review department on Friday, June 8.

Third, although Wal-Mart has stated it might reduce the size of the proposed Supercenter and, while it is logical to expect a smaller store will generate fewer car trips, in reality we do not believe a slightly smaller store will be any less of a Supercenter to Wal-Mart shoppers. Will fewer people go there because of the proposed 7 percent reduction in size? We do not believe so, and it is unlikely that this reduction will have any noticeable effect on traffic in our neighborhood or surrounding neighborhoods.

Finally, the residents of the Allandale neighborhood realize that any new development will bring increased traffic. However, the volume, patterns, and timing of traffic related to a Supercenter are significantly higher and more intrusive than many other types of more appropriate commercial development. Unlike a supercenter, appropriate development would not overburden our local streets and potentially threaten public safety.  We respectfully request that the City staff and council members study the attached peer review of the LPC TIA and, subsequently, use this more reliable quantitative analysis as the basis to reject the LPC’s second site plan for the Northcross Mall redevelopment. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tom Linehan
Presiding Officer, Allandale Neighborhood Association

Here is an email to city staff from Allan McMurtry regarding their meeting on the smaller supercenter:

I want to thank you for attending the meeting with the Allandale Neighborhood Association on Monday. Your group asked several questions, and I wanted to respond in part.

1) We have contacted our engineering company, VRPA, about doing a study to back up the 1st study they did. The contract would cost us $5000. Now, we're prepared to raise funds to pay for this study. However, we'll need to know just what site plan building size we're looking at. We've already paid big bucks for a study of a 206,000 sq ft facility, only to have that thrown out by Lincoln inserting the digits 192 in front of the comma. Tell you the truth; that hurts. If citizens are going to be required to submit engineering studies at their cost, then the applicant should be required to submit one set of data only per site application. If they want to change the numbers, then they, just as we are, should be required to file anew and start over.

2) The City's position is that the reduction of the store size below 200,000 sq ft, 4%, justifies a reduction of VTD from approximately 5.5 to 4.7 (this is from memory, but the firgure represents the VRPA VTD plus the ITE 7th Ed assumed VTD divided by 2). This is a 4% reduction in size and a 14.5% reduction in VTD. We would like for the City of Austin to revisit this.

3) In light of the high % of grocery use at this site, we believe traffic will be higher than even the 5.50 VTD. Keep in mind that VRPA found Peak Hour VTD rates of 7.7 at some of the stores it surveyed.

4) Lincoln is claiming that the mitigation should include an extra turn land at Anderson. Please be advised that the ROW at that location will not permit that turn lane to be built without condemnation of land. If I am correct, the current ROW there is 90'. 5 lanes of 12' each plus 2 feet for each of two curbs is 64'. Two 8' sidewalks brings the total ROW used to 8'. That does not allow for room for another turn lane without condemnation. Further, the standard distance to trees from the curb by TXDot is greater than 10'. We would like the City to review this proposal.

Comments

[joey bigtime]

Well, yes, a Central Market would be better. Organic food, neighborhood events, a kids playscape....much better than a store full of cheap plastic and bad taste.

[John Lawrence]

RG4N will end up just like Save Our Springs; bankrupt and owing Lincoln a fortune in legal fees. And here I thought only Don Quixote tilted at windmills. I've said it all along that if Central Market was the tenant rather than Wal-Mart, RG4N wouldn't have cared about run-off, traffic, or anything else. They want small business in the mall. Well, guess what? That's what was in the mall when it failed. But you can't tell them anything. Also, a legal question would be to challenge the standing of RG4N to file a suit in the first place.

[Dave Lemon]

Plan Approved! (again!!)...

And now the RG4N people scramble for yet another rationalization of why they should get to impose their minority view on the rest of the community. Apparently the next straw they are grasping for is runoff - but let's face it: there is currently *no* remediation whatsoever for runoff at Northcross, and Lincoln is adding some - it's been in the plans since day 1. That's a positive change no matter how you look at it. But, no doubt, RG4N will be spinning this in their typical ignorant negative light shortly...

[John Lawrence]

It is here and it IS a done deal. Get used to it and make the best of it.

[Allandale Realtor]

The Supercenter is here, whether we like it or not. Now is the time to try and make as large an impact as possible by asking for compromise.