BG Reads | News You Need to Know (November 15, 2021)
Downtown Austin
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin FC led league in stadium sellouts, other metrics in first season — here is what's on tap during offseason (Austin Business Journal)
Austin FC President Andy Loughnane said the team's inaugural season "exceeded our own expectations in every aspect," calling it "one of the most successful launches in the history of major league sports."
The team — the 27th in Major League Soccer and the first professional team from Austin in North America's major professional sports leagues — finished its season on Nov. 7.
And while Austin FC didn't post stellar results on the field, finishing second-to-last in the 13-team Western Conference, Loughnane pointed to a number of successes off the field, including lofty merchandise sales and charitable contributions, high attendance and television markers and strong community interest.
"Austin FC's launch was one of the most successful launches in the history of major league sports, in particular when you measure impact on the community and community relevance," he said, adding that they hit all their goals in terms of the vision of the ownership group, corporate sponsors and stadium experience. "All of those key ingredients contributed to what I think has been one of the most successful launches in the history of sports."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir says she's retiring (KUT)
Longtime Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir says she's retiring.
DeBeauvoir, 67, has been in charge of elections and other crucial administrative functions in Travis County since 1986. In an announcement Friday, she said she won't seek reelection when her term expires next year.
Ever mindful of elections, DeBeauvoir said she wanted to make the announcement before Saturday, the day the filing period opens for whoever seeks to replace her.
It’s a position that handles everything from marriage licenses to court records to elections. That last responsibility has been a particular focus for DeBeauvoir.
“You know I have loved this job so much — all of it — but especially the elections part. I think that once you conduct your first election and it’s in your blood, then it has you for the rest of your life," she told KUT. "And I think one of the things that we’ve tried to teach … young voters is that once you start voting, it becomes a habit for life. And I have always hoped that the voters that I reached out to when they were young are still voting today.”
DeBeauvoir also worked for more than a decade designing a one-of-a-kind ballot system that pioneered security features that are now commonplace in most U.S. voting machines.
She told KUT that she decided to retire on Election Day earlier this month, and that she plans on doing national and international election-related work — work that wouldn't be possible heading into the 2022 midterm elections.
"I struggled with it ... but what really kind of tipped me over the edge is I'd really like to do international elections work and do some work nationally on elections, on audits and elections ethics," she said. "And there's no way I can do that with the workload that this office normally has, and we're coming into a year where the workload is going to be particularly heavy."
DeBeauvoir said she will continue on until early 2022, and that she’s going to recommend her deputy, Dana Hess, take over the role on an interim basis until her position is up for reelection next November… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Neighbors fight for more community benefits from huge East Austin development (Austin Monitor)
A rezoning for a massive mixed-use development in East Austin went before the Planning Commission last Tuesday, showcasing intense negotiations between the applicant and neighbors trying to squeeze community benefits from the project.
The current proposal for the 15-acre site at 6705 and 6501 Regiene Road calls for a whopping 1 million total square feet of office, retail and restaurant space, in addition to artist workshops, a brewery and anywhere between 371 and 742 apartments – 10 percent of which will be affordable at 60 percent of the median family income.
“The project is intended to be a mixed-use hub dedicated to Austin’s creative community,” said Leah Bojo, representing the applicant. Ten thousand square feet of commercial/industrial space will also be priced affordably for local artists and businesses.
Neighbors, despite making inroads toward securing more concessions, did not support the rezoning. “We think you should deny this until there are better investments for communities of color that are left in this area,” said Nadia Barbot, co-chair of the East MLK Neighborhood Contact Team.
The change from Limited Industrial Services (LI) and Single Family-Standard Lot (SF-2) zoning to Limited Industrial Services-Planned Development Area (LI-PDA) zoning would allow 275 feet of building height near U.S. Highway 183 and 120 feet on the rest of the site. It would also double the allowable floor area ratio while cutting parking requirements in half. City staff does not support the 275-foot height allowance.
The project sits next to important multimodal infrastructure. The Walnut Creek Trail and the right of way for the future Project Connect Green Line regional rail run along the southern edge of the site. Bojo is in talks with Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority about a rail station near the development.
This isn’t the only big project in the area. Adjacent to the site is Tech 3443, a 110-acre redevelopment proposal for the former Motorola chip factory site. Council approved the rezoning for Tech 3443 last year, permitting building heights ranging from 160 to 400 feet. In this case, the developer also worked with neighbors and offered extensive concessions.
Planning commissioners supported the Regiene Road project on the whole, but had reservations about allowing industrial use so close to future homes. In a stretch of convoluted motion-making, commissioners tried to limit industrial use, but no motion had enough votes to pass. This means the rezoning moves on to City Council without a recommendation.
“It’s very complex, and it definitely deserves more public input,” Chair Todd Shaw said, adding that neighbors will have time before Council to continue negotiations.
Those talks have been ongoing for over a year. When the commission first heard the case two weeks ago, several neighborhood representatives said they were close to striking a deal with Bojo. On Tuesday, neighbors still did not support the project, despite having secured affordability and worker protections, among other concessions… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin Transportation Department looks to future with pedestrian connected-vehicle technology (Community Impact)
In an effort to improve road safety, a pilot in East Austin is underway to alert vehicles when a pedestrian is about to cross the street. The program, monitored by the Austin Transportation Department, is at two crossings on Rosewood Avenue: Angelina Street and Navasota Street.
When a pedestrian pushes the signal at one of the crossings, it alerts oncoming drivers that have vehicles connected to wireless networks, or connected vehicles, that someone is trying to cross. It also provides an alert if the driver is about to run a red light.
“Distracted driving is one of the main causes of accidents, and so any additional warnings that drivers can get of something that's occurring in front of them, the more likelihood of them intervening and doing something,” said Joseph McKenzie, a project manager with the transportation department’s Smart Mobility Office… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Clay Jenkins files for re-election, seeking 4th term as Dallas County’s top official (Dallas Morning News)
Clay Jenkins filed for a fourth term as Dallas County’s top elected official on Saturday. Jenkins, a Democrat, has recently been responsible for the county’s COVID-19 response, and he told The Dallas Morning News Friday he hopes to continue that pandemic response if re-elected. “I’m going to finish this fight with COVID,” Jenkins said. “I think this COVID epidemic has shown it is important for everyone to have access to affordable health care.”
Jenkins said many of his priorities for a fourth term stem from the pandemic’s impact on the county. He said he’d work with school districts to address students’ learning gaps, with small-business owners who have been hit economically and with federal American Rescue Plan Act funding that the county is responsible for dispersing. “With ARPA we can do a lot with mental health and helping small businesses,” Jenkins said. “We’ve got some tremendous opportunities.” The county judge is the the county’s highest elected official and is a member of the Commissioners Court. The position is not part of the judicial system, but is an administrative role. Jenkins oversees the county government. Jenkins first took office in 2011 and won his most recent term in 2018 with 63% of the vote. His current term ends at the end of 2022. The primary election will be March 1, and the general election is Nov. 8. The candidate filing deadline for the March primary is Dec. 13… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Leaked Houston firefighter logs offer minute-by-minute look into Astroworld tragedy (Houston Chronicle)
The firefighters arrived at NRG Park just before 7 a.m. Friday, hours before the chaos would begin. They met with police at 7 a.m. They checked their radios with Harris County dispatch 45 minutes later. Entries in a Houston Fire Activity log show a routine early morning in advance of Astroworld. But by 9:15 a.m., entries in the 11-page document show a volatile situation unfolding. “HPD preparing to open gates to participants,” firefighters wrote. Minutes later, they added another entry: “Participants breached secondary checkpoint.” Three minutes later, they added an update: Would-be concertgoers had breached the main entryway, rushing past a COVID testing area. It was an early indication of the energy of the concertgoers at Astroworld, the festival that had drawn spectators from across the country to watch Travis Scott and other performers last weekend. That energy turned deadly in the evening, when eight people died and dozens were injured.
The Astroworld Festival — meant to evoke memories of the now defunct amusement park of the same name — was in the Yellow Lot at NRG Park. It held two stages, food and drink stands, and carnival rides. The focal point of the festival was the main stage, where a dramatic volcano exuded flames and a large clock counted down the seconds to Scott’s performance. This year’s festival would have marked the third concert since 2018 — it was canceled last year because of COVID. In the run-up to the festival, Houston native Scott appeared all over the city, visiting with school children, opening a basketball pavilion at Sunnyside Park, and unveiling the Cactus Design Center. He was to perform with Drake, SZA, Roddy Rich and others. Houston firefighters arrived at a small command post parked on the far-flung Orange Lot, about a mile from the festival grounds. They spent the day listening to radio dispatches from some of the hundreds of Houston police officers inside and outside the park, or using cellphones to call the concert organizers’ privately hired medical providers. They added notable updates to the 11-page log. After the early breach of the entry, firefighters wrote just after 10 a.m.: “Venue fences damaged. No control of participants.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Will real estate ever be normal again? (New York Times)
Will real estate ever be normal again?
The third time Drew Mena’s manager asked him about relocating to Austin, Texas, he and his wife, Amena Sengal, began to seriously consider it. They had deliberated each time before, in 2017 and 2018, but landed on a hard no: Drew and Amena had lived in New York for more than 10 years, and they loved it. They owned a two-unit townhouse in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and they felt lucky to have it, with its yard and the kind of close-knit neighbors who compete to shovel one another’s sidewalks after a snowfall. But now it was August 2020, and the pandemic had changed their calculus. When the city shut down, their daughter, Edie, was 7 months old; Drew and Amena co-parented while working full time, one at the kitchen island, the other at the breakfast table. In May, they escaped to Drew’s family’s cottage in New Hampshire, and gradually their tether to the city began to fray. When the relocation offer came in from Drew’s employer, an asset-management company, they started browsing listings online, and it looked as if they could get a lot more space in Austin. They would certainly save money on everything else, like gas and groceries. The world is ending, they said to themselves. Why the hell not?
For Amena and Drew, their Austin home-buying odyssey was just beginning — a monthslong ordeal that would teach them quite a bit about the cruel realities of America’s housing market, in which home prices nationwide have risen by an astonishing 24.8 percent since March 2020. And this first lesson, appropriately enough, demonstrated just one of many ways that the old, measured rules of home-buying no longer applied — that the cutthroat competitiveness that once defined only a few U.S. markets (San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles) had now become standard across the country, as the median home price in small- and medium-size metropolitan areas rose by jaw-dropping levels: Boise, Idaho, 46 percent; Phoenix, 36 percent; Austin, 35 percent; Salt Lake City, 33 percent; Sacramento, 28 percent. By bidding on two properties she had never visited, in a city nearly 2,000 miles away, Amena joined the 63 percent of North American home buyers in 2020 who made at least one offer on a home that they had never stepped into. Homes had been one of the few things resistant to online shopping: We browsed online, but we didn’t buy. The pandemic changed that. The result was a market that moved much, much faster. What Amena and Drew would ultimately learn about Covid-era real estate was not just the necessity of raising their budget and lowering their expectations. It was also that the whole mind-set required to buy a house, the most important purchase that most Americans will ever make, had undergone a fundamental transformation — possibly a long-term one, given the realities of both supply and demand… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Covid-19 created a child-care crisis, and big providers aim to fill the void (Wall Street Journal)
The biggest players in U.S. child care see an opening in America’s caregiving crisis.
National operators such as KinderCare Education and Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. BFAM 0.13% are buying up closed centers, reaching out to parents who lost care during the pandemic and signing contracts with employers to provide nannies and daycare for their workers.
These big providers—with hundreds of centers across the country and thousands of employees—represent a sliver of the $40 billion-plus U.S. child-care industry. Some 95% of child care is provided by single-site operations and small local chains, industry analysts say.
About 13,000 centers representing more than 20% of the nation’s child-care capacity, including those offering before- and after-school programs, shut down during the pandemic and haven’t reopened, KinderCare said in a regulatory filing. As many of half those centers may never reopen, industry analysts say.
Many small players lacked the capital required to cover payroll and facility costs to stay afloat during Covid-19 shutdowns. Operating a daycare facility is more costly now than before the pandemic because many providers have had to reduce capacity to make room for more social distancing.
Also, a shortage of workers has led to higher wages and more competitive benefits. Large providers have more flexibility to offer medical and retirement benefits, along with wages well above the $11-an-hour national average for a child-care worker… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Biden set for expansive virtual meeting with Chinese president (The Hill)
President Biden will tell Chinese President Xi Jinping that the U.S. and China need to build “commonsense guardrails” of communication to ensure the competition between both countries does not veer into conflict during their virtual meeting on Monday evening, a senior administration official said.
Biden is expected to raise concerns with China’s behavior on an array of issues while also discussing areas of potential cooperation during his first face-to-face meeting with the Chinese leader since taking office.
The meeting, which will be conducted virtually, is expected to stretch several hours. Officials have lowered expectations for the meeting since it was officially scheduled on Friday, saying it is not expected to yield specific deliverables… (LINK TO FULL STORY)