BG Note | News - What We're Reading (March 15, 2018)
[Austin Metro]
Is a historic district on the way for Travis Heights? (Austin Monitor) LINK TO STORY
If at first, second or third you don’t succeed, try something smaller. That might prove the key to a Travis Heights historic district.
A local historic district has long been in the works for the South Central Austin neighborhood. For more than a decade, residents have attempted to tackle a designation for the whole neighborhood, with no success. Then, three years ago, a more modest proposal emerged in the form of the Bluebonnet Hills historic district, which would have included 86 structures in the neighborhood. Now neighbors are back with an even smaller proposal...
Council considering another $110 million for Waller Creek park system (Austin Monitor) LINK TO STORY
City Council members have expressed interest in the idea of extending the life of a tax increment reinvestment zone that was set up to fund the Waller Creek chain of parks, an ongoing project that city government is betting will become a cultural and recreational gem that will spur further economic activity downtown.
It is unclear, however, whether those plans will be affected by the recent announcement by the city that the Waller Creek Tunnel, the anchor of the project vision, wasn’t built correctly...
Commissions weigh use of parkland for stadium (Austin Monitor) LINK TO STORY
In the face of a lawsuit brought against it by the Ohio attorney general and the city of Columbus to prevent it from relocating to Austin, Precourt Sports Ventures, the owner of the Columbus Crew SC Major League Soccer team, continues to search for the perfect piece of land on which to build a privately funded stadium.
Both the Parks and Recreation Board and the Environmental Commission made it clear that Roy G. Guerrero Colorado River Park was an unwelcome suggestion as a candidate for the proposed soccer stadium...
[STATE]
Dallas is "all in" on Amazon HQ2. Austin? ¯\_(?)_/¯ (Texas Tribune) LINK TO STORY
To hear Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings tell it, attracting Amazon is “like a poker game.” “Bring the bidding war on,” he said shortly after Dallas made the shortlist to house the tech giant’s second headquarters. And in that war, he’s “all in,” he made clear in an interview weeks later. A few hundred miles south, Austin Mayor Steve Adler has yet to ante up. “I don’t know that we want to be” Amazon’s second home, Adler said last week. Austin and Dallas are the only two Texas cities still in the running to land Amazon’s second headquarters, a coveted $5 billion capital investment the company says will employ as many as 50,000 people...
After SB 4 ruling activists call for local government to take action (San Antonio Express-News) LINK TO STORY
The day after an appeals court upheld almost all the so-called sanctuary cities ban in Texas, immigration activists called on cities and counties to take steps to minimize the law’s impact. Senate Bill 4, passed last year, creates civil penalties for government officials who limit local police enforcement of immigration laws and criminal penalties for officials who don’t honor immigration detainer requests at jails. A San Antonio federal judge had blocked portions of the law, most notably the requirement to honor detainer requests, but on Tuesday a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans put almost all of the its provisions back in place...
[NATION]
Uber official: Here's what to expect, and not, from driverless ridesharing (Austin Business Journal) LINK TO STORY
Molly Nix wants self-driving cars to seem so normal that you barely care there's no driver.
Nix, a design lead at San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc., focuses on improving rider experience for driverless ridesharing. She called autonomous technology the next logical step "in continuing Uber's mission for safe, reliable transportation."
"We see self-driving as a natural extension for Uber's ridesharing service," she said Wednesday in a speech at South by Southwest...
Perry says he doesn’t want VA secretary job (The Hill) LINK TO STORY
Energy Secretary Rick Perry says he’s not interested in becoming the next secretary of Veterans Affairs. Speaking with reporters after a Wednesday congressional hearing, Perry called the idea that he would move to the VA “fake news” and said he is staying at the Energy Department “until the foreseeable future — happily,” The Associated Press reported. Multiple news outlets, led by The New York Times, reported Tuesday that President Trump was considering firing VA Secretary David Shulkin and moving Perry into the job...