If there’s anything that its critics and supporters appear to agree upon, it’s that CodeNEXT has been managed very poorly. The controversial rezoning-and-redevelopment process is now two years past schedule, with costs more than four times as high as its original budget. The city’s Zoning and Platting and Environmental commissions have publicly complained about the ...
A few weeks ago, the land-developer-backed group “Evolve Austin” trumpeted a news article predicting that the Austin Independent School District (AISD) would soon endorse CodeNEXT, a controversial plan to rezone and redevelop neighborhoods across our community. The group apparently saw local educators as allies: Austin’s public schools have been losing students for years as low- ...
The City of Austin’s Environmental Commission has refused to advance CodeNEXT, the controversial land-redevelopment plan, saying its potential impact on area flooding and other environmental issues is unpredictable. Earlier this month, the commission passed a sharply worded resolution complaining that neither it nor the Austinites living in flood zones and other environmentally sensitive areas have ...
If you follow Community Not Commodity, you’ve heard how CodeNEXT would be bad for Austin’s middle-class families, bad for our local schools, and bad for the city’s already-congested traffic. It could also hurt Austin’s natural environment in irreversible ways. That’s why Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS) has joined Community Not Commodity in demanding that the ...
The California-based consultants in charge of the controversial CodeNEXT project have busted their budget, and now they’re begging taxpayers for millions more. Tomorrow, the Austin City Council could vote to approve another $2 million for Opticos Design, inflating CodeNEXT’s original cost estimate by more than 400 percent. The company has failed to meet the ...