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Travis Club, a massive 1,047-acre multi-use development, is getting closer to breaking ground in northwest Spicewood despite environmental concerns from nearby neighbors.
The development would include 274 single-family lots, 223 villa units, a marina and a golf course near the mouth of Lake Travis. The project has been proposed multiple times leading up to the vote, first in July 2008 under the project name Vizcaya.
The Travis County Commissioners Court voted 4-1 in favor of the new development—approving utility use and site plans—on Tuesday, bringing it one step closer to construction. Commissioner Brigid Shea cast the dissenting vote.
Concerned neighbors joined in on the meeting, citing concern for the habitat of the endangered Golden-Cheeked Warbler, worsening drought conditions and potential traffic disruptions.
Protecting the Golden-Cheeked Warbler
Concerns have gathered over the habitat stability of the Central Texas native Golden-Cheeked Warbler, which raises its young exclusively in the Hill Country.
Several neighbors have reported vegetation clearing on nesting grounds, which is prohibited by the moratorium between March 1 and Aug. 31, saying that could cause an existential threat to the bird. The developers have said they plan to set aside some land for conservation but have not released detailed plans.
Linda Pollock, a resident of Spicewood, implored the court to oppose the preliminary plan for a number of reasons, namely the damage it would cause to native flora and fauna.
“This land of the proposed development has been untouched, natural and native for many years,” Pollock said. “There are mature native ash juniper trees that could be as old as 50 to 200 years. The continuous canopies that are provided by these mature ash junipers are a habitat for the Golden Cheeked Warbler, which has been sighted in the area.”
During her time, Pollock explained that mature trees also bring up cool groundwater, which reduces erosion and helps with downslope flooding. Pollock said she hoped the court would determine “the development design is inappropriate, outdated and detrimental to the people and the environment.”
Building a golf course in a drought
Travis County is currently under a D4, “extreme drought,” with parts reaching D5, “exceptional drought,” Micah King, representing Kit Bradford with law firm Husch Blackwell, mentioned but brought attention to drought conditions, followed by reiterating the need to protect the warbler.
“In our current drought situation, we’re expected to have a mega-drought over the coming decades and just last week LCRA cut off water to its downstream agricultural customers to honor its firm water contracts,” King said. “Why are we promoting a golf course and issuing an environmental variance when it’s exactly the worst type of use you want to have in a buffer?”
Traffic concerns
(Travis County Commissioners)
Nearly everyone who spoke brought up the Hill Country’s famously narrow, windy and often dangerous two-lane roadways. Mayor of neighboring Village at Briarcliffe Al Hostetler said their government is “very much opposed” pending a traffic analysis on Bee Creek Road and Thurman Bend Road.
“Early approval will set the stage for disaster,” Hostetler said. “There are ten curves, some of them very tight in that 1 and a half miles. Also, the intersection has been deemed dangerous enough for the highway department to post warning signs on bee creek that say ‘box view.’”
Meanwhile, property association president of Angel Bay Charles Gordon said the analysis will be “critical” on such a “dangerous… winding road.”
The project must now undergo traffic analysis, which is expected to take six-nine months, throughout all four stages of development before the commission will give further approval.
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(Bob Daemmrich)
“You start with the signage,” he said. “You know exactly where the entrance is, and that’s for first responders too. We really want to make sure we keep up with visitor patterns. If they come in, they go through a system. Driver’s license, background check, which takes about a minute. We have a software system.”
AISD Director of Operations Matias Segura explains the overall school construction and what the entry vestibule looks like. (Rich Oppel)
The vestibule has two sets of locked doors. The exterior set has an audio-visual intercom, operated by a desk officer who has a view of visitor parking, the building approach and the vestibule. If allowed in, a visitor is buzzed through and then faces questioning and clearance by the desk officer. The visitor is given a card-reader pass. If a second person attempts to “trail in” behind another visitor, he is trapped in the vestibule until his status is determined. The second set of doors, into the main school building, remains locked and shut. It is open when students arrive in the morning.
Thus, the days of walking into the school, maybe waving at the principal’s executive assistant and strolling off to the cafeteria for lunch with your daughter are gone, a relic of a more bucolic time when “active shooters” were never imagined. But one must ask, what do we give up for greater safety?
Austinites remembered the Uvalde shooting victims in a vigil at the Texas Capitol in May. (Tony Fuentes)
Some critics argue that we are at risk of losing traditional values in the redesign of schools, courthouses, hospitals, churches and shopping centers. Writing in The Washington Post, architecture critic Philip Kennicott said the nation’s gun culture “threatens an essential precondition for democracy: its public space… Ideals of openness, flow, transparency and access will no longer be sustainable.”
Segura contemplates the question. At 41, he has held his job as AISD director of operations for four and a half years. Prior to that he was a consultant who led the team to build Austin’s new courthouse. His Austin and Texas roots are deep. He was born here, graduated from Bowie High, and went off to Lubbock to earn a degree in civil engineering from Texas Tech. He returned to secure an MBA at the University of Texas at Austin. He and his wife Joy Burson-Segura have two daughters who attend AISD schools. Segura said he and his operations team love AISD, care deeply about their work, and want citizens “to see us as partners.”
Back to what we lose in hardening the schools.
Segura says, “We think about students’ health. Having daylight, bringing light into a hardened facility, being able to access outdoor learning areas, (which is) hypercritical, especially in what we have learned in the pandemic.” Segura doesn’t like the idea of moats around schools (exotic, expensive) nor of classroom bomb shelters (what would teachers and students think about their looming presence?), efforts that are being tried elsewhere.
Healthcare workers receive the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the AISD Performing Arts Center in Mueller in 2021. (Jordan Vonderhaar)
AISD must juggle school security with the historic use of our schools for other purposes, such as voting, PTA-PTO meetings, community fairs, and, more recently, COVID-19 testing, vaccinations and food distribution. AISD does not want to end those uses, so the challenge is to design schools with separate rooms or places for those uses.
Clearly, Segura has thought about balancing conflicting equities. For him, it’s not all locked doors and blank brick or concrete walls. He stresses the importance of building a culture that includes shared responsibility of all school employees where, for example, a custodian could ask a stranger whether they have a visitor’s badge. All staffers should be well-trained in security measures, knowledgeable about new technology, and committed to working as a team to protect students, teachers and others. “We are working very, very hard on the culture,” he says. “Also, we need (financial) investment if we are going to move the needle.”
(Laura Figi)
Kennicott, the Washington Post critic, quotes the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist and New York Democrat, who said, “Architecture is inescapably a political art, and it reports faithfully for ages to come what the political values of a particular era were. Surely, ours must be openness and fearlessness in the face of those who hide in darkness.”
But that was in 2001. What messages will Austin’s new public schools convey to future generations about our 2021 political values?
“First and foremost, these are education spaces that belong to our community. Our objective is to create incredible learning experiences for our students and at the same time ensure that the students and staff are safe.” He said he wants people to view schools as “inspired,” places where they would want to send their children. “Great things are happening in that space,” and that teachers see a place where they want to work and where they feel safe.
Voters in AISD will decide Nov. 8 on a $2.44 billion bond package to provide “funding for improvements to enhance safety, centers on equity, benefits every campus, and addresses affordability,” according to AISD officials.
