BG Reads | News You Need to Know (December 16, 2021)
Downtown Austin
[BINGHAM GROUP]
The BG Podcast is back! EP. 148 features Jose "Chito" Vela III a candidate for Austin's Council District 4.
The immigration and defense attorney declared in early November, following Council Member Greg Casar announcing his candidacy for Congress (triggering an automatic resignation).
Bingham Group CEO A.J. and Associate Wendy Rodriguez discuss Chito's campaign and what he hopes to achieve if elected.
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Planning for 19-acre lakeshore development in downtown Austin moves on into 2022 (Community Impact)
Initial plans for the transformation of the "Statesman PUD" site that could bring a new landmark development to the south shore of Lady Bird Lake are progressing and could be finalized in early 2022.
The 305 S. Congress Ave. planned unit development, or PUD, is home to the Austin American-Statesman building, a portion of the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail, and an unofficial viewing area for nightly bat flights from the Congress Avenue bridge. The redevelopment of the property appraised at more than $74 million has been in the works for years, and plans now center on bringing more than 3.6 million square feet of residential, hotel, office, retail and restaurant space to the lakeshore.
A Dec. 14 decision by the Austin Planning Commission pushed its formal vote on the PUD update to late January, when the body could approve the project outline and send it to City Council for consideration. (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin FC to play 8 teams for the first time ever as MLS drops 2022 schedule (KXAN)
Austin FC will face eight teams from Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference for the first time in their history in the 2022 season.
MLS revealed Austin FC’s opponents for the upcoming campaign when they released the schedule for the season at 1 p.m. Wednesday.
The team will open their second season with a home match against FC Cincinnati at Q2 Stadium at 5 p.m. on Feb 26. That fixture was previously announced by the club last month.
Austin FC will enter the new season without attacker McKinze Gaines – but the schedule revealed he will see his former teammates sooner than he might have anticipated.
The 23-year-old, who became the first Austinite to score for the club last season, was the first of five players selected by MLS newcomers Charlotte FC in the expansion draft on Tuesday, with Austin FC receiving $50,000 in allocation money as part of the selection.
Austin will play Charlotte on the road on June 30.
Under the proposal from Endeavor Real Estate Group, the old newspaper campus and waterfront trail would be razed and replaced with multiple high-rises, bike and pedestrian pathways, parkland and recreational features. An eastern extension of Barton Springs Road and a link to a future Project Connect transit station are also included in the proposed project scope… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Council extends masking rules to June (Austin Monitor)
After hearing from Dr. Desmar Walkes, health authority for Austin-Travis County, at a joint meeting with the Travis County Commissioners Court Tuesday, City Council voted to extend the current health authority rules until June 10, 2022. Commissioners also acted to extend their rules.
Under those rules, students, staff and visitors older than 2 years are required to wear face masks on school property and school buses as long as Austin is in stages 3, 4, or 5 of the health department’s risk-based chart for Covid-19. The city and county are also continuing to require that members of the public wear face masks within their buildings. The rules are identical to the ones that have been in effect since August.
The area is currently in Stage 3 and Walkes pointed out that the situation has gotten worse since Thanksgiving.
Council voted 8-1 to extend the rules, with Council Member Mackenzie Kelly voting against and Council Member Vanessa Fuentes absent for the vote. (She had attended the earlier meeting with Travis County.)
The city’s Covid-19 dashboard shows that there were 970 new cases during the week between December 7 and December 14. As of Tuesday, there were 116 people hospitalized in Austin as a result of the virus.
Two people phoned in to the meeting to ask Council not to extend the masking regulations. Mayor Steve Adler, who made the motion to approve the ordinance, said, “This is an extension of the ordinance we passed last year to give the rules of our health authority the weight and enforceability of ordinances.” Adler noted that the ordinance they were approving was similar to one that he and Travis County Judge Andy Brown ordered last year.
Adler added, “One of the reasons we’re doing as well as we are in the community, one of the reasons why our numbers are low, is that we have a community that has been vaccinated and boosted, but it’s also because we have a greater number of people masking, I believe.”
Kelly said, “One of the first confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Austin was on March 13, 2020. Today vaccine services for Covid-19 are readily available and the trends are showing recovery and vaccine rates are increasing. Information that we see on the Austin-Travis County Covid-19 dashboard, in my view, does not support extending an ordinance that includes penalties for an additional year.”
“As of today, we heard we had 121 inpatients (in hospitals). … To put this in perspective, Austin has a population of more than 950,000 residents,” she continued. “Further, it alarms me that we did not give our community members a chance to voice their concerns on how the ordinance will significantly impact their lives for nearly another year.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Aurora integrates driverless trucks with Uber Freight to haul between Dallas and Houston (Dallas Morning News)
Amazon-backed self-driving vehicle firm Aurora is integrating its driverless tech with Uber Freight’s logistics platform to haul shipments between Dallas and Houston. Aurora acquired Uber’s self-driving vehicle business in December 2020. Through its partnership with the company, Aurora plans to integrate with Uber’s trucking platform in multiple phases beginning with a pilot route running from North Texas to Southeast Texas. Since last week, the company began hauling freight for Uber Freight customers with its automated trucks along the Dallas-Houston route. An Uber Freight driver drops the load with Aurora, and Aurora’s self-driving trucks haul it along the freeway between Aurora’s hubs in either city, then another human Uber Freight driver handles the last leg of the journey. Over the next two years, Aurora will integrate its trucking platform, Aurora Horizon, with Uber Freight with the goal of allowing its own customers to also haul freight for shippers using Uber Freight.
One factor ailing the U.S. supply chain recently is the underutilization of long-haul truck drivers. This is mostly due to inefficient scheduling of resources already available, one Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation and Logistics research scientist told Congress last month. One goal of Aurora’s integration with Uber Freight is to allow customers of its future commercial driverless truck product to minimize the amount of time fleets of trucks are off the road. Aurora Horizon is the company’s subscription-based platform that comes with any Aurora-powered truck fleet bought or leased by a customer. Aurora aims to launch its self-driving truck platform commercially in late 2023. The company has been piloting its self-driving 18-wheeler technology along I-45 between the two major Texas cities since late 2020. The trucks it currently uses are from the company’s test fleet and still include a vehicle operator behind the wheel for safety and data collection… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Republican primary for attorney general heats up, with challengers taking aim at Ken Paxton’s legal troubles (Texas Tribune)
Four years ago, Republicans watched closely to see if Attorney General Ken Paxton — who had been battling a high-profile securities fraud indictment — would draw a last-minute primary challenger as the candidate filing deadline loomed for the 2018 primary.
But despite his apparent vulnerability, Paxton ran unopposed in his party on his way to a second term.
This election cycle, things are different. Paxton is facing what is shaping up to be the biggest, most contentious fight among Texas Republicans next year, with the fate of the state’s top law enforcement official on the line. He has attracted three primary foes who are well known in Texas politics, a lineup that was finalized when candidate filing closed Monday evening for the 2022 primary. They are Land Commissioner George P. Bush, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Tyler… (LINK TO FULL STORY)