BG Reads | News You Need to Know (September 20, 2021)
Austin Opry House, late 1970’s
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
Work Session of the Austin Council (9.28.2021 at 9AM)
Regular Meeting of the Austin City Council (9.30.2021 at 10AM)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
CEO A.J. recently sat down with Voyage Austin for an interview on his path to lobbying and founding Bingham Group. Check it out here.
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin's jobless rate falls to 3.8%, lowest since pandemic began (Austin American-Statesman)
In the latest sign that Austin's economic recovery from COVID-19 is pushing ahead, the area's unemployment rate last month fell to its lowest point since the pandemic hit. The jobless rate in the Austin metro area came in at 3.8% in August, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. That's down from 4.2% in July and 5.5% in August 2020. The metro area numbers are from Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties. Employers in the region added 1,400 jobs last month, according to the Texas Workforce Commission, bringing total nonfarm employment to 1.24 million — about even with the number of people employed in the Austin area in February 2020, just before COVID-19 pummeled the economy nationwide.
Nearly 140,000 local nonfarm jobs were shed in March and April last year amid the initial shock of the pandemic. Austin's current jobless rate signals how far the recovery has come since last year, when unemployment hit a pandemic peak of about 12% in April 2020. After that peak, the jobless rate spent months hovering in a monthly range of about 5% to 6% — roughly double pre-pandemic levels since the area's jobless rate had been 2.6% in February 2020. The Austin metro area's unemployment rate remains below Texas and national rates, which both stand at 5.3%, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. The rapid comeback in comparison with past downturns is not surprising, said Ray Perryman, an economist based in Waco. The pandemic "was an entirely different animal" because there were no big speculative bubbles or structural issues that are seen in a typical downturn. Austin's jobless rate falls to 3.8%, lowest since pandemic began Lori Hawkins Austin American-Statesman In the latest sign that Austin's economic recovery from COVID-19 is pushing ahead, the area's unemployment rate last month fell to its lowest point since the pandemic hit. The jobless rate in the Austin metro area came in at 3.8% in August, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. That's down from 4.2% in July and 5.5% in August 2020. The metro area numbers are from Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties. Employers in the region added 1,400 jobs last month, according to the Texas Workforce Commission, bringing total nonfarm employment to 1.24 million — about even with the number of people employed in the Austin area in February 2020, just before COVID-19 pummeled the economy nationwide. More:Texas economy faces hurdles, but growth still in the forecast More:Austin's jobless rate fell to 4.2% in July, lowest since COVID struck More:$180 million project envisioned for Hill's Cafe site in South Austin Floor manager Casey Langford, left, and owner Suzy Ranney, stock shelves at Paper Place on North Lamar Boulevard. Austin's unemployment rate fell to 3.8% in August. A tight job market has put pressure on employers to raise wages, economists say.
Nearly 140,000 local nonfarm jobs were shed in March and April last year amid the initial shock of the pandemic. Austin's current jobless rate signals how far the recovery has come since last year, when unemployment hit a pandemic peak of about 12% in April 2020. After that peak, the jobless rate spent months hovering in a monthly range of about 5% to 6% — roughly double pre-pandemic levels since the area's jobless rate had been 2.6% in February 2020. The Austin metro area's unemployment rate remains below Texas and national rates, which both stand at 5.3%, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. The rapid comeback in comparison with past downturns is not surprising, said Ray Perryman, an economist based in Waco. The pandemic "was an entirely different animal" because there were no big speculative bubbles or structural issues that are seen in a typical downturn.
"Obviously, this report is encouraging overall," Perryman said. "The state and the Austin area continue to gain jobs, and the growth is relatively diverse. The strength in business and professional services is a distinct positive aspect of the report, as it indicates that offices are opening and resuming more normal activity." However, the outlook will depend on whether the COVID-19 delta variant can be brought under control, he said… LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Opry House development faces opposition from Planning Commission, neighbors (Austin Monitor)
A mixed-use project seeking to revive historic music venue Austin Opry House ran into concerns Tuesday from the Planning Commission, which voted to postpone the rezoning case by a month to give the applicant, Richard Weiss, more time to work with neighbors worried about traffic and disruption from concertgoers.
Plans for the development at 200 Academy Drive – just off South Congress Avenue – include an 800-person concert venue, over 100 housing units and commercial space. But in order to build the project, Weiss needs to remove the Fairview Park Neighborhood Conservation Combining District overlay on the site and add Mixed-Use (MU) zoning. City staffers do not recommend removing the NCCD.
The Austin Opry House, originally called the Texas Opry House, had a storied history before closing in 1992. Willie Nelson held ownership in the venue, which hosted famous acts such as Ray Charles, Tina Turner and the Eagles, not to mention Nelson himself. Waylon Jennings and Stevie Ray Vaughan both recorded live albums there that went platinum and double platinum, respectively. Since the venue’s closure, it has been used as office space.
Weiss said the new Opry House, beyond reviving a piece of old Austin, would fill a gap in the Austin music scene: “There is no venue between 800 and 1,200 occupancy,” he said.
Laura Toups, representing the neighborhood contact team, opposed the project because of traffic and noise concerns. “We just could find no justification for a major music venue coming off of a local neighborhood street,” Toups said, adding that the neighborhood does support new housing, just not a music venue.
“We’re going to do everything we can to minimize traffic within the neighborhood,” Weiss said. The current design forces drivers exiting the venue to turn right on Academy toward Congress and away from the single-family neighborhood. The planned multifamily buildings would also serve as a buffer between the venue and the nearby single-family homes. More detailed, though still preliminary, plans for the development can be found here.
Weiss said that the NCCD severely limits the property and should not have been placed on the site in the first place. “As applied to 200 Academy, the restrictions are so great that the existing two-story development exceeds the NCCD limitations,” he said. “This has created the city’s largest historically zoned parking lot.”
While some commissioners supported the project and rezoning request, others were sympathetic to traffic and noise concerns, opting for a more restrictive occupancy cap on the venue or even the removal of the venue altogether.
“I just feel like this needs to be scrapped tonight,” Commissioner Jennifer Mushtaler said. Instead of a music venue that would burden neighbors with traffic, Mushtaler said she wanted to see a project with more housing units, particularly income-restricted ones.
Commissioner Joao Paulo Connolly disagreed. “The reason we’re not considering just putting all housing here is because this is a historic music venue,” Connolly said. “And we’re trying to preserve some of Austin, which has seen this rapid change, and particularly a venue like this, which is so closely connected to the essence of whatever that idea of an Austin was that attracted so many of us here.”
Commissioners made multiple motions in search of common ground. All failed, until a motion to postpone squeaked by with seven votes.
“I strongly think that there is a way to solve this puzzle, to revive a historic music venue location, but do it in a way that’s respectful to the neighborhood’s concerns,” said Commissioner Grayson Cox, who made the motion to postpone. The commission will hear the case again on Oct. 12. The case’s City Council date has not yet been set.
This is also further evidence that the Austin labor market is on fire. As of July, the metro had regained nearly all of the jobs lost at the onset of the pandemic, which is something not many large cities have recorded nationwide. Top employers across the region are also expanding their workforce and hundreds of companies are considering a relocation or expansion to the area. That's fueling a surging population.
Roughly 48,700 people were unemployed in the Austin metro last month, down slightly from the 54,500 people unemployed in July, according to the data. Austin's rate is also much lower than the state and the national unemployment rates for August, which were 5.3%.
“Austin’s skilled workers are enjoying a bounty of career opportunities and we can assist with finding immediate employment,” Tamara Atkinson, CEO at Workforce Solutions Capital Area, said in a statement.
Companies such as Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) are actively searching for thousands of employees in the metro, and CEO Elon Musk has said the gigafactory rising east of Austin will need 10,000 people by the end of 2022. The metro is also attracting major investments such as Samsung's potential $17 billion plant, which could create 1,800 direct jobs in Austin or Taylor.
The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce tracks the number of jobs pledged by companies relocating or expanding in the Austin area. As of August, nearly 18,000 jobs were pledged by companies relocating to or expanding in the area, according to a tally by Opportunity Austin, the Chamber's economic development arm. That scope of job creation represents roughly 81% of the record 22,114 jobs pledged by companies in 2020… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Draft of new Austin City Council District maps reflects growth in Asian population (KUT)
As Austin redraws the boundaries of its political voting blocs, the city is close to establishing a district where nearly a third of the population identifies as Asian.
“The Asian population has actually grown considerably,” Christina Puentes, chair of the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, told KUT. “And a lot of that is concentrated in District 6.”
At its meeting Thursday, the commission voted in favor of new, but still preliminary, City Council districts. Over the next several weeks, the commission will present these maps at five public meetings before offering a final map to City Council members for approval by Nov. 1.
Since 2014, Austin has elected City Council members across 10 geographic districts. The boundaries of these districts are amended every decade in response to new census data. In this latest rendition, commissioners have to consider several demographic changes, including the fact that people who identify as Asian now account for nearly one-tenth of the city’s population; Austin’s Asian population increased from 6.3% to 8.9% over the last decade.
“It will continue to grow,” Amy Wong Mok, founder of the Asian American Cultural Center, said. “I have no doubt about that.”
“It would be really nice to be able to see that representation,” Saatvik Ahluwalia, a digital strategist for the Austin Asian Community Civic Coalition, said. “One way to do that is definitely to have an [Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders]-majority City Council district.”
Austin City Council District 6, which encompasses neighborhoods from Lake Travis to the edges of Round Rock, is home to the city’s largest Asian population. When the maps were first drawn in 2013, roughly 13% of the district’s population identified as Asian. If these latest maps are approved, that portion would nearly double to 28%… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Downtown Commission wants financing plan, study on convention center expansion (Austin Monitor)
With the city expected to begin entering into engineering and design contracts next spring related to a revised expansion of the Austin Convention Center, the Downtown Commission has asked for a detailed financing plan and market analysis for the public to review in advance of contract approvals.
At last week’s meeting, the commission voted 4-3 to approve a resolution asking City Council to have the city manager provide the funding plan as well as a detailed analysis of the convention and tourism industry four months ahead of making any financial commitments related to the expansion.
The commission also voted unanimously to form a working group that will gather information related to the expansion – an idea that was first proposed in 2015 and has been radically reimagined in the past year.
In June, Council approved the construction manager-at-risk methodology for moving forward with the expansion, which will take place entirely on the existing facility’s footprint rather than expanding westward as had been originally planned.
City staff is currently working on the request for qualifications and request for proposals from engineering and design firms interested in the project that was at one point expected to cost around $1.2 billion. The eventual new price tag would be covered over many years by revenue from the city’s portion of the Hotel Occupancy Tax, which was a rich source of income before the Covid-19 pandemic.
During a presentation about the state of convention and meeting business, Austin Convention Center Director Trisha Tatro said there are signs of promise to justify the expansion, especially since the center is in need of more exhibit hall space, which is the limiting factor that costs the facility much prospective business each year.
Most expansion scenarios, which will now require moving underground and increasing the center’s height, seek to provide 140,000 square feet of meeting space, 450,000 square feet of exhibit hall space and 120,000 square feet of ballroom space… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Recalibrated density bonus fees bring good news for commercial projects, bad news for residential (Austin Business Journal)
As the city works on recalibrating fees under a popular density bonus program, staff have said that residential developers can expect to pay more, while commercial developers will likely pay less for bigger downtown projects.
City leaders have been retooling the Downtown Density Bonus Program in recent months to bring the popular city program up to date with current market conditions, which has meant higher fee-in-lieu requirements for added density in tower projects. Controversial interim fee adjustments, based on formulas from 2019, were approved in May while the city continues work on tweaking the program.
Those recalibrated fees are expected to be presented to Austin City Council in the coming weeks. While the figures aren't quite finalized, city staff told the Downtown Commission on Sept. 15 that the fees are likely to increase for residential projects and decrease for commercial projects from the current, interim fees.
Density bonuses allow developers to exceed the typically allowed floor-to-area ratios, which translates into taller buildings for small downtown sites. In return, developers are asked to provide on-site affordable housing or provide fees-in-lieu, as well as meet green building standards and urban design guidelines. Developers largely opt to pay the fees-in-lieu… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Biden administration speeds up deportation flights for Haitians in growing Texas migrant camp (Texas Tribune)
DEL RIO, Texas — The Biden administration said Saturday it was accelerating deportation flights and sending 400 federal agents to Del Rio to seize control of an escalating crisis as thousands of mostly Haitian immigrants continued streaming to the Texas city’s border, camping out in squalid conditions under its international bridge.
Customs and Border Protection temporarily shuttered its ports of entry there late Friday and re-routed international traffic 57 miles east to the nearby city of Eagle Pass, a move local officials worried could cost millions in trade losses if the closure lasts.
CBP is coordinating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard to move migrants from Del Rio to other processing locations, Department of Homeland Security officials said in the statement Saturday. About 2,000 had already been transferred, but overnight the camp grew to more than 14,600 migrants — the most Val Verde County has ever seen at once, local officials said. DHS said it was securing extra transportation to expedite deportation flights to Haiti and other countries in the next 72 hours… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Gov. Abbott will pick the Texas secretary of state, who gets vast new powers from GOP elections bill (Dallas Morning News)
The new GOP elections law gives broad new powers to the Texas secretary of state, and by extension Gov. Greg Abbott, who will choose its next leader. Whomever the Republican governor picks could shape Texas elections for years to come. When the law takes effect Dec. 2, the secretary of state will be newly empowered to fine counties up to $1,000 a day and to audit potentially years’ worth of their elections. The office will also have broader ability to pass on alleged voter fraud or missteps by election officials to the attorney general, who has made prosecuting election violations a top priority. The law leaves much of the rule-writing up to the secretary of state, so the office will have discretion in how it wields the new power.
“We’ve turned what’s largely an administrative function that does a little bit of training ... into this power center of regulatory heft and administrative fines,” said Adam Haynes of the Texas Conference of Urban Counties. The law’s backers say it makes sense for the secretary of state to have authority because it’s the highest election official in Texas. “The important thing is to find a path to make sure you have got good top-down guidelines for election processes,” said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston. Overseeing elections is just one of the Texas secretary of state’s many tasks. But it’s increasingly becoming the most high profile as partisan battles over voting rights play out the national stage. Politics derailed Abbott’s most recent picks for secretary of state. Both of them failed to get confirmed by the state Senate. In 2019, Democrats blocked David Whitley’s nomination after he oversaw a botched attempt to purge voter rolls that wrongly flagged thousands of Texans as potential noncitizens.
This year, the GOP-led Senate Nominations Committee never even considered Ruth Ruggero Hughs, who left the office in May. Republicans have not explained why they passed on Hughs. But Democrats speculate it was her office’s oversight of the 2020 election, which saw Houston’s Harris County roll out novel early-voting methods now banned by the new GOP-backed elections law. Abbott has yet to name a replacement. Spokeswoman Renae Eze said Abbott and his team continue to “carefully review all qualified applicants for Secretary of State to ensure the best representation for Texas.” Deputy Secretary of State Joe Esparza, a former Abbott staffer, is acting as interim. The office is still developing guidance for county election officials before the law kicks in later this year, spokesman Sam Taylor said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Beto not even best Dem against Abbott (Axios)
Actor Matthew McConaughey’s nine-point lead in a theoretical matchup against Greg Abbott shows just how vulnerable the hard-right Texas governor could be in a general election.
Why it matters: Abbott has won conservative accolades for his abortion, mask and vaccine bans. Axios reported Sunday that former Rep. Beto O’Rourke is preparing to announce a gubernatorial challenge — but a recent poll shows he’s not even the most popular Democrat in the state.
Few in Texas Democratic circles believe the Academy Award-winning McConaughey is serious about a potential political run.
That would mean O’Rourke would have a clearer shot to secure his party's nomination.
It also would let him moderate some of his positions while training his focus on Abbott, who still has to fend off a primary challenge from former Rep. Allen West.
By the numbers: The new poll from the Dallas Morning News and University of Texas at Tyler had McConaughey up 44% to 35% over Abbott.
In the same survey, O’Rourke’s numbers were far softer. Abbott beat him 42% to 37%.
Abbott's approval rating is 45% positive, 44% negative.
Between the lines: For comparison, President Biden had a 42%-52% approval rating — a full 10 points underwater.
Sen. Ten Cruz (R-Texas), who faced brutal headlines over his trip to Cancun last winter while his state’s electric grid was failing, was — barely — in positive territory, at 44%-42%.
But, but, but: Texas Democrats have dreamed big before — like when O'Rourke challenged Cruz in 2018 — only to be disappointed on Election Day. Abbott may be vulnerable, but it's telling that Biden is even less popular… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Battle over Biden’s massive child-care bill takes new turn with virus (Politico)
Working women, whose child care duties vastly expanded during the pandemic, are bracing for a new hit to their incomes and careers as the resurgent coronavirus jeopardizes plans to keep kids in school full time.
After 18 months of shutdowns, online learning and canceled summer camps, the return to classrooms was supposed to be a turning point for women, whose participation in the labor force plunged to its lowest level in more than three decades during the pandemic. But as Covid-19 cases rose in the summer, more than 40,000 women dropped out of the labor force between July and August, even as Americans flocked back to work, government data shows. Men returned to the job over that period at more than three times that rate.
That’s lent new ammunition to the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers in their push to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to overhaul the nation’s child care industry to make it more accessible and affordable, arguing that doing so is the only way to get families back on track. They worry about a repeat of last September, when more than five times as many women as men fell out of the workforce.
“I don’t see a way that we can truly have people returning to work, especially women, in the numbers that we need if we are not providing for child care,” Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), a member of the House Democratic leadership, said in an interview. The latest jobs numbers, she said, “are a red flashing light that now is the time to invest in women in our workforce.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)