In Austin, it’s home-sweet-former-airport

Redevelopment of 711-acre Mueller Airport combines New Urbanism, green features, and affordable housing.

By early March, the first 50 families will have moved onto the site of the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, about three miles northeast of downtown Austin, Texas. Despite the depressed residential market across much of the US, properties at Mueller are in such demand that buyers had to navigate a lottery-like system to purchase houses there.
“Virtually all the homes in the [348-unit] first phase are sold, and there’s been no problem with people backing out,” says Brian Dolezal, a spokesman for the master developer, Catellus Development Group. Approximately 1,100 people registered last summer for an opportunity to purchase a house in the development’s first phase.
Catellus’s success reflects the strength of the Austin economy and the care that has gone into laying out the 711-acre project. “This has been planned with citizens’ groups for years and years,” says Pam Hefner in the City’s Redevelopment Services. The vision is of a mixed-use community containing employment, medical care, stores, restaurants, extensive park land, and a boulevard where streetcars may eventually run.
Although much of the surrounding area consists of detached houses, “citizens’ groups recognized that [Mueller] needed to be dense,” Hefner says. “All throughout, they supported the idea of dense development and of meshing with existing neighborhoods.”
“There’s a ‘green necklace’ of parks around the perimeter,” says Matt Whelan, senior vice president of Catellus. “It not only provides a transition and buffer; it’s a place where the new and existing communities can meet.” Twenty percent of Mueller’s land has been set aside for parks and open spaces.
“Every home at Mueller is within 600 feet of a public park,” Whelan points out. Generous access to parks is intended to offset the small sizes of most of the lots. A hike and bike trail will go through the entire community. “There’s not one cul-de-sac,” he adds.
The airport operated from 1930 to 1999, when it was replaced by the much larger Austin-Bergstrom International Airport several miles to the south. The first completed element of Mueller’s redevelopment was the Dell Children’s Medical Center, which opened last June. The medical center, previously known as Austin Children’s Hospital, had considered moving to Round Rock, 17 miles north of Austin, before deciding to build at Mueller, on the capital city’s not so prestigious eastern side.
Near the medical center, the first 220,000 sq. ft. phase of a regional shopping center has been built, buffering Mueller from Interstate 35 and also serving as the new community’s economic engine. Its sales and property tax revenue helps to finance Mueller’s amenities. The shopping center’s second phase, 150,000 sq. ft., is under construction. Despite being composed mostly of large national and regional retailers, “there’s four-sided architecture on all the buildings,” Whelan says. The big stores open onto a central space containing “orchard-style parking — one tree for every four parking spaces, to reduce the heat island effect,” Dolezal says. Smaller buildings have entrances facing both the parking area and a street. The center has been laid out on a grid so that it can eventually be redeveloped in an urban fashion.
A town center may be started by late 2009. It will be truer to New Urbanism, with housing or offices above restaurants and stores, many of which will be locally owned. Near the town center, Simmons Vedder & Co. has begun constructing about 440 apartments, placed on top of ground-floor retail. In the town center and throughout Mueller there are expected to be live-work units.

residential types
By completion in 10 to 15 years, Mueller is projected to have about 4,600 living units, about evenly split between detached houses and other types — both for-sale and rental. One residential complex of “garden court homes” consists of 12 dwellings — six units from each of two builders — that share a common outdoor space.
Mueller is participating in the LEED-ND (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-Neighborhood Development) pilot program, and “every property will be LEED-certified or certified by Austin Energy’s Green Building Program,” Whelan says. Green building features may include rainfall harvesting, tankless water heaters, energy-efficient air conditioners and heaters, and specialty flooring.
A sizable portion of the housing is required to be affordable for people of limited income. The affordable houses, selling for $120,000 to $160,000, will be mixed among market-rate houses and will be visually indistinguishable from them, according to Whelan. Market-rate housing will sell between $240,000 and $750,000. The Mueller Foundation will have the first right to buy an affordable house when it’s resold. Most of the appreciation will be reserved for the Foundation, to make sure housing remains affordable.
Boulevards have been designed so that streetcar service could operate in the right-of-way if Austin voters approve the system. “There will be dedicated bike sidewalks as well as pedestrian sidewalks on some of the major streets,” says Whelan. The airport’s control tower has been preserved, and old hangars are occupied by the Austin Film Society.
ROMA Design Group led the team of consultants that worked with the city and citizens to plan the airport redevelopment. Tours of Mueller will be conducted during CNU XVI in Austin April 3-6.