Onto the actual meeting!
Citizen comment: Mostly community members talking about the SMART Terminal. None of us can stop talking about it! But I think I should go on to other topics.
Items 1-4: Quarterly financial reports and audits and investment reports, etc.
Everything looks fine.
Item 14: East McCarty and Leah.
Developers want to make something of this land:
That yellow L-shape.
This item first came up last summer. The developer applied for Heavy Commercial zoning. P&Z said yes, and then Council said no. Council was concerned about Embassy Suites and the conference center, our beautiful prized jewel of the city. (Which the city is still paying off for another 10+ years or something, by the way.)
In November, the developer applied for Light Industrial. This time, P&Z denied it. That means that it will take 6 votes at council to override P&Z.
So it went to Council in December. Rather than deny it, they formed a committee to try to work something out with the developer. And now the committee is done, and it’s back for the vote.
The committee and the developer made a lot of compromises, but they got stuck on one thing: nighttime truck traffic. Council wants Quiet Hours after 10 pm, because of the people sleeping at Embassy Suites. The developer was saying it’s too restrictive for their business model, because warehouses need to load and unload their wares overnight. Council pointed out that it’s annoying to try to sleep and hear BEEP BEEP BEEP all night long.
Finally the vote:
The vote: Should this be zoned Light Industrial?
Yes: Jude Prather, Shane Scott
No: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Matthew Mendoza
So it failed. The developer can try something else, or sell it off.
Let’s just marvel at the close compassion offered to the weary travelers at Embassy Suites, shall we? What tender thoughtfulness. You can understand that a business traveler might not want to sleep next door to a 43 acre industrial site. What were you saying about the SMART Terminal again?
One final note:
At 1:25:10, the developer is trying to say that we should approve this project because no one else will want to develop it. And he says this exact quote:
“No large grocery store chain will consider this property because of the new HEB which is across the street.”
UH WHAT NEW HEB ACROSS WHICH STREET?
Across I-35? Across McCarty? Across Leah Ave (towards Amazon)? What does he know that I don’t know?
The location of a 3rd HEB has been controversial. First, constantly we’re talking about how few resources there are on the east side. The east side needs amenities.
But also, there’s history here. Back in 2016, City Council approved an HEB going in on the corner of Wonderworld and Hunter. People were furious. The main reasons:
- The 2015 floods were just a year earlier, and now we were talking about paving a massive bit of land along Purgatory Creek
- this would require a bunch of curb cuts on Wonderworld, which violated the agreement when the greenway was developed.
Quick digression on the Wonderworld extension. Wonderworld used to stop at Hunter Road. You took Old RR12 to go west towards Wimberly. It took decades to design and extend Wonderworld west, because it’s cutting through Purgatory Creek, which is really sensitive area. There was a complicated deal involving donation of greenbelt land and promises to take care of this area.
Given all that, this quote is hilarious:
“We couldn’t find a more environmentally sensitive area to go through,” said Sabas Avila , the city’s assistant director of public services. The area includes a flood control dam, caves, endangered species such as the golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo, aquifer recharge zones and a Native American burial site, Avila said.
“Believe me, we tried! But this was the best we could do.”
(I’m being a jerk, taking the quote out of context. The speaker is probably an environmentalist.)
Anyway: it appears the proposal for the Wonderworld HEB is still on hold.
Bottom line: this developer appears to know about some new HEB, relatively close to Embassy Suites. Eeeeenteresting.
The San Marxist 
HEB owns that land across from the Embassy Suites. Their time to develop on Hunter across from the CVS has run out and there’s too much of a fight there anyway. So the I35 location is probably where they’ll build their next store.
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Ah, that’s a much better spot than the Hunter road one. So you mean across McCarty, then, on the northbound frontage road?
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Yep. It’s a nice sized tract and the city is growing out that way anyway. It’s a bit of a distance from some of the more established east-side neighborhoods but it’s location there will lessen traffic downtown of folks trying to get to either of the other HEBs.
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That would be great. And seems compatible with the future comp plan to center more amenities down on E McCarty and Rattler Road.
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