On the Austin City Council’s Agenda for this week are two cases (Items 77  C14-2025-0090 and 78 C14-2025-0093) asking for upzoning to downtown mixed-use (DMU) of property that includes the site of Jack Brown Cleaners on Martin Luther King and Nueces.     The current zoning of the Jack Brown Cleaners site is CS which allows buildings of 60 feet, the DMU zoning would allow 120 feet, but the applicant indicated that it will ask for more density bonuses from the council to take the proposed zoning to 433 feet of mixed use development.   They propose two towers, on 37 stories and the other 34 stories.  That is 44% taller than the private Dobie dorm on the UT campus.

 

Besides concerns about the appropriateness of the proposed buildings’ heights, there are environmental concerns.   The site is located in the Shoal Creek Watershed of the Colorado River Basin.   A licensed professional engineer and professional geologist issued a January 2026 report (pg4-6) with these conclusions, among others:

 

  • “The Site soil and groundwater are contaminated with high concentrations of the dry cleaning chemical Tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and its degradation by-product chemicals, including Trichloroethylene (TCE) and Vinyl Chloride (VC). The chemicals are present at levels exceeding indoor air human health limits for vapor migration into current and future buildings…
  • It is my opinion that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) inappropriately approved JBC’s request to cease Site cleanup and monitoring. The Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP) Certificate of Completion granted to JBC means that they and future property owners have no further obligations to cleanup and protect on-site residents, visitors, and workers from cancer risks despite the potential that indoor and outdoor air quality could exceed human health safe limits.
  • Regardless of TCEQ’s previous actions, future development plans for the JBC property should address these potential human health risks that likely will remain for decades unless the Site is properly remediated or building measures incorporated to prevent migration of toxic chemical gases into the buildings…”

 

Accordingly, questions remain whether the site has been or will be appropriately remediated or development plans required to address any potential human health risks.

 

The planning commission denied the community’s request to postpone the case for additional environmental review, reasoning that any unresolved environmental contamination was unrelated to the grant of additional zoning entitlements to the developer. Under the city process, environmental contamination issues can be addressed during site plan review after the developer has been granted zoning for the project. However, there is no public notice, hearing, or community input available at this stage.

 

Write the Council and ask them to postpone the zoning case as necessary to determine whether there is any “ongoing potential risk to human health” posed by the site before the zoning entitlements are granted, or minimally, to require staff to provide their findings and recommendations regarding environmental contamination and remediation to the Council and interested parties thirty days before any site plan approval, so that the community is afforded an opportunity for review and input.