BG Reads | News You Need to Know (November 20, 2020)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
***NEW*** BG Podcast Episode 114: Discussing Austin's Code Department with Director José Roig
On today’s episode we speak with José Roig, Director of Austin’s Code Department.
José and Bingham Group CEO A.J. discuss his background leading to the directorship; the mission and role of the Austin Code Department; COVID-19's impact operations; and his priorities going into 2021.
Joining the City of Austin in 2007, José was most recently Interim Director of the department. His position was made on permanent Friday, November, 13th (Read the City’s press release here).
Pre-filed bills for the 87th Texas Legislature:
[AUSTIN METRO]
Austin and Travis County move to Stage 4 coronavirus risk (Community Impact)
The city of Austin and Travis County have moved into Stage 4 coronavirus risk, local health leaders announced at a Nov. 19 news conference. The city and county had been under Stage 3 restrictions since Aug. 25, but rising case counts and COVID-19 hospital admissions have forced Austin Public Health officials to tighten restrictions.
Stage 4 guidelines ask businesses to voluntarily operate at 25%-50% capacity. Additionally, higher-risk residents, including those who are over age 65 or have underlying health conditions, should avoid gatherings with more than two people from outside the household. Previously, the recommendation was for those individuals to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people from outside the household. For those who are not at a higher risk to contract the virus, the recommendation remains to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people.
"If we do not take the steps to change now to mitigate the risk, to flatten the curve, we could be in Stage 5 territory in just a few weeks. We must do all we can to prevent that from happening so that we can keep our businesses healthy, keep our schools healthy and keep our community healthy," said Dr. Mark Escott, Austin-Travis County interim Health Authority… (LINK TO STORY)
Homebuilding is booming in Austin — and the action is centered in outer suburbs (Austin Business Journal)
With Tesla's factory supercharging the Austin housing market, experts say the far-flung reaches of the metro stand to benefit as well.
“In an already hot real estate market, it’s turning it up to broil," said Vaike O'Grady, Austin regional director of housing market research company Zonda, formerly known as Metrostudy.
The construction of Tesla's $1.1 billion gigafactory is having an effect on housing from Georgetown down to San Marcos, O'Grady said. Realtors have said employees of the electric vehicle company are already scouring the metro for homes. In one example, a Tesla employee sought a home for less than $750,000 on the west side of Georgetown, learning along the way that Central Texas sellers don't need to haggle.
In another, a Tesla employee spent nine hours a day searching for homes under $350,000, before settling on a house in Buda, south of Austin.
The residential submarket of Kyle/Buda recorded the most home starts of any submarket in the area for the 12 months from September 2019 to September 2020, according to Zonda. That was a first in the recollection of O'Grady, who has been closely watching the local housing market for years. Kyle/Buda was also the top submarket for home starts in the third quarter of 2020.
“Because of lack of supply closer in, we are seeing more activity in the suburbs and the exurbs," O'Grady said.
Overall, home construction in the Austin area is booming. Through the end of September, 15,327 single-family building permits were recorded in the metro, up 9% from 14,054 permits through the same point in 2019, according to U.S. Census data collected by American City Business Journals.
In terms of raw increase, that 1,273 jump in permits ranked No. 5 in the country, behind only Houston, Dallas, Phoenix and Charlotte. Both the Houston and Dallas metros have more than 7 million residents while Phoenix has about 5 million. Meanwhile, Charlotte has a population of more than 2.6 million while the Austin metro has an estimated 2.3 million people.
Much of the new home construction in Central Texas is taking place in master-planned communities far from Central Austin. Three MPCs in the area ranked among the 50 top-selling communities nationwide in the first half of 2020, according to RCLCO Real Estate Advisors. Scarborough Lane's Sunfield community in Buda placed No. 16 in the United States with 327 home sales through the first six months of the year, RCLCO reported. Brookfield Residential's Easton Park development in Austin came in at No. 24 with 296 homes sold and Mariner Real Estate's Santa Rita Ranch community in Liberty Hill placed No. 31 with 249 homes sold… (LINK TO STORY)
Economist: Austin poised for post-pandemic rebound (Austin America-Statesman)
The coronavirus has sapped the strength of Austin’s once-booming economy, but the city is positioned for solid growth next year if the pandemic is brought under control, according to a forecast for 2021. “Overall, Austin remains in a very strong position,” said Sarah House, senior economist for Wells Fargo Securities. “It has weathered the (COVID-19) storm exceptionally well when you compare it to a lot of other areas.”
House, speaking Wednesday during an annual economic outlook event sponsored by the Austin Chamber of Commerce, didn’t provide a forecast for the amount of growth in the region’s gross domestic product she expects over the coming year. But she said business activity nationwide is likely to pick up in the back half of 2021, when Wells Fargo is anticipating that virus vaccines will be widely available. Two pharmaceutical companies — Pfizer and Moderna — have recently announced successful efforts to develop vaccines, although both still must win government approval and face hurdles manufacturing and distributing them in high volumes. In the interim, House said, economic activity may well decline in the near-term, including in Austin, because of rising rates of infections this fall and because federal stimulus programs are winding down that had been aimed at providing assistance to people and businesses hurt financially by the virus.
“We are going to see probably momentum continue to slow over the next couple months, as that fiscal stimulus fades and virus cases mount,” she said. Still, Austin “was an out-performer and a highflier before the pandemic, and the pandemic hasn’t change that” relatively speaking, House said. The city “hasn’t been able to escape the downturn that we have seen nationally, (but) it has been much more modest” here than either statewide or nationally… (LINK TO STORY)
Landmark commission moves to block demolition of Delta Kappa Gamma building downtown (Austin Monitor)
The Historic Landmark Commission has voted unanimously to initiate historic zoning for the Delta Kappa Gamma International Headquarters Building, against the owner’s wishes.
Currently, 416 W. 12th St. continues to serve as the office building for Delta Kappa Gamma, which owns the building. The group is seeking a demolition permit, which would enable it to sell the building. Becky Sadowski, Delta Kappa Gamma international president, spoke to the commission about the plan, which calls for replacing the building with a 31-story tower. She stressed that decreasing membership has made the group look for ways to survive.
She acknowledged the impressive history of founder Annie Webb Blanton, who was the first woman ever elected to a statewide office in Texas. The group moved into the building a decade after Blanton’s death.
“Our organization is more than a building. Our organization is the vision that Dr. Blanton had to develop and empower women educators around the world. And it is the work that we do every day to make that vision a reality,” Sadowski said. “This project is key to continuing to achieve that vision. We are at a critical point in Delta Kappa Gamma’s life.”
Commissioner Ben Heimsath used the case as an example of the importance of “reining in” the current dynamic in the city that offers the choice of demolition and construction of a 30-story building, or nothing.
“This is a serious, serious threat to preservation in the city of Austin and we need to start addressing this,” he said.
The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Delta Kappa Gamma’s representative, Michael Whellan, explained the group had embraced the designation as a way to support an architecture student’s project.
“It was not clear to DKG at the time that a process they saw as celebrating their organization could later end up impacting their ability to make strategic decisions about their resources, and ultimately, endangering their ability to deliver on their mission and vision,” he said. “At its core, I think this case is about two things. First, how we balance our priorities as a city, including putting forward thoughtful designs and plans, while also meeting our growing housing needs. Importantly, I also think it’s about the way in which our land use policies, as a city, often catch folks in unsuspecting binds.”… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Gov. Greg Abbott reiterates Texas will not shut down again while touting arrival of new coronavirus treatment (Texas Tribune)
Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday touted the arrival of a new antibody treatment as progress in Texas' fight against the coronavirus, while again ruling out any new statewide business restrictions as the state experiences alarming growth in cases and hospitalizations.
"It is important for everybody in the state to know that statewide we’re not gonna have another shutdown," Abbott said during a news conference in Lubbock. "There's an overestimation of exactly what a shutdown will achieve, and there's a misunderstanding about what a shutdown will not achieve."
The governor, who issued a stay-at-home order in April, contended that "there are now known severe medical consequences to that — emotional, mental-type consequences to it — as well as the devastating financial consequences."… (LINK TO STORY)
No, a high-level member of the Biden campaign was not arrested in Texas. (New York Times)
In recent days, conservative websites have reported that a high-level staff member in Texas for the election campaign of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. was arrested on charges of voter fraud for his role in supposedly helping to orchestrate a ballot harvesting scheme. The news seemed to acquire additional credibility when supporters of President Trump began circulating a photo purporting to show the staff member, Dallas Jones, in handcuffs being escorted by police officers. But Mr. Jones, a political consultant based in Houston who serves as the Texas state political director for the Biden campaign, called the rumors “lies.”
“I was not arrested,” he said Tuesday in a phone interview. “These are categorically made-up allegations. They are baseless.” There have also been no voter fraud criminal cases filed against Mr. Jones, according to court records in Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located. An official with the Biden campaign also denied additional reports that Mr. Jones had been fired from his campaign job, calling the claims surrounding Mr. Jones “laughably false.” As for the photo, it was from June 2019 and shows the actor Cuba Gooding Jr. after he surrendered to police in New York and was charged with sexual abuse and forcible touching after a woman accused him of groping her at a rooftop bar.
California, Ohio order nightly curfews on gatherings as coronavirus surgesThe rumors surrounding Mr. Jones stem from a court case initiated by Republicans in September that sought to block the extension of time for mail-in and early voting in Harris County. The Texas Supreme Court rejected the Republican request in October. The court filings included accusations of an illegal “ballot harvesting operation” in Harris County, where volunteers and other workers were gathering absentee and mail-in ballots and delivering them to ballot collection sites. Citing inquiries conducted by private investigators, the filings claimed that the “harvesters” were taking the ballots of homeless people and nursing home residents, forging signatures and picking candidates of their own choosing… (LINK TO STORY)
San Antonio named a finalist for Space Command headquarters (San Antonio Business Journal)
San Antonio's Port San Antonio has been named one of six finalist cities to land the U.S. Space Command headquarters, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said in a news release Thursday afternoon.
The Alamo City was on the radar for the last few months, reaching phase 2 in August in a bid to attain the permanent headquarters of one of the Defense Department's 11 unified commands. The command is temporarily based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Gov. Greg Abbott indicated that Port San Antonio is the local site being considered, and he gave his support for it.
"The Department of the Air Force will find no better location for the U.S. Space Command than Port San Antonio," Abbott said. "Not only does the state of Texas have the resources, universities and human capital necessary to support the Space Command, but we are also enriched by our long-standing and celebrated tradition of military service and innovation in Texas. I strongly urge the Department of the Air Force to choose Port San Antonio as the home of the U.S. Space Command."
If San Antonio is chosen, the headquarters would bring 1,400 jobs to the area, retired Maj. Gen. Juan Ayala, director of the city of San Antonio's military and veteran affairs office, told the Business Journal in August.
Ayala had actively lobbied San Antonio's congressional delegation to push for the city as the headquarters of Space Command with all of the members of the House of Representatives in the area sending a letter of support, and Cornyn, R-Texas, advocating for all three Texas cities.
Space Command is distinct, but complementary to U.S. Space Force, the sixth branch of the military that President Donald Trump created in late 2019.
“Military City, USA is as patriotic a city as they come, with robust defense, education, training, research and cybersecurity infrastructure at the ready,” Cornyn said in a news release issued Thursday. “Texans have already demonstrated outsized success in the military and have led the way in space exploration."… (LINK TO STORY)
[NATION]
CDC recommends Americans to avoid traveling for Thanksgiving (The Hill)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending people avoid traveling to see friends and family during the Thanksgiving holiday as COVID-19 cases continue to surge, with millions of people currently infected, many of whom are not showing symptoms and don't know they are contagious.
“As we're seeing exponential growth in cases, and the opportunity to translocate disease or infection from one part of the country to another, leads to our recommendation to avoid travel at this time,” Henry Walke, COVID-19 incident manager at the CDC, said in a press call with reporters Thursday.
Thanksgiving should be spent with only people living in your households, Walke said.
pdated CDC guidance released Thursday also clarifies the definition of “household” to mean people who have been living in the same home for at least 14 days before celebrations. The update was particularly aimed at college students who typically return home from campus for the holidays but risk bringing an infection with them this year.
“The safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving this year is at home with the people in your household,” said Erin Sauber-Schatz, head of the CDC's community intervention and critical population task force… (LINK TO STORY)
California, Ohio order nightly curfews on gatherings as coronavirus surges (Reuters)
California’s governor on Thursday imposed a curfew on social gatherings and other non-essential activities in one of the most intrusive of the restrictions being ordered across the country to curb an alarming surge in novel coronavirus infections.
The stay-at-home order will go into effect from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. each day, starting Saturday night and ending on the morning of Dec. 21, covering 41 of California’s 58 counties and the vast majority of its population, Governor Gavin Newsom said.
“The virus is spreading at a pace we haven’t seen since the start of this pandemic, and the next several days and weeks will be critical to stop the surge,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement announcing the measure a week before the Thanksgiving holiday.
A similar 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew order was issued on Thursday in Ohio and will remain in effect for the next 21 days, Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, announced separately.
As in California, the Ohio curfew would not prohibit grocery stores from remaining open past 10 p.m, or keep restaurants from staying open late for takeout orders. Individuals would likewise be permitted to venture out for food, medical care, or other necessities, as well as to take a jog or walk a dog.
In California, the restriction essentially marks a return to the first-in-the-nation, statewide stay-home order that Newsom imposed in March, except it applies only during the designated curfew hours rather than around the clock… (LINK TO STORY)