Design Commission Seeks Smart Growth Revisions

AUSTIN-The wave of downtown projects–most recently, Congress at 4th, AMLI’s Block20, Congress at Sixth Street and the Four Seasons Residences–has the Austin Design Commission reworking its process for handing out credit for Smart Growth.

The city’s Smart Growth initiative, which encourages denser, higher-user development in underutilized areas of town, can mean high-dollar fees being waived for developers. The Austin Design Commission’s nod in the process can mean up to 50 points toward the 635 possible points a developer can earn on the city-designated matrix.

Chairman Juan Cotera has told the Austin Design Commission he intends to present a more structured checklist for point tallies for commission approval in May. The goal is to set up a more methodical and consistent rating process among the projects. “What I’m proposing is to get together a format that each review committee can have,” Cotera told his colleagues. “We need to take each guideline and each recommendation that we have and our review has to be based on what degree they met those recommendations.”