Environmentalists Balk at Plans for Massive Eastern Crescent Development

Many who offered comments at the Environmental Commission’s June 17 meeting spoke in bitingly personal terms about the new Dog’s Head land development deal, but none more so than Robin Rather, the longtime environmental activist. Rather began her remarks by describing the Dog’s Head deal as dystopian and environmentally racist. She then turned and stared directly at Richard Suttle and Andy Pastor, the representatives of the Endeavor Real Estate Group, who were defending the development. 

“Richard Suttle, I’ve known you a long time,” Rather said. “Andy, I’ve known you a long time. This is not right. You have betrayed everything that’s important about Austin. You betrayed the neighbors. How could you possibly not have told the neighbors? You are so much better than that. You did this on purpose. You left the neighbors out. You left the community out. And you are selling out one of the most sacred, beautiful, and important parts of our entire region.”

Rather was referring to an agreement Austin leaders cut with Endeavor on May 21, allowing the real estate group a 45-year contract to develop 2,600 acres of land – about twice the size of Downtown – east of Highway 183, one mile north of the airport. The area is called Dog’s Head because, viewed on a map, it resembles the head of a canine. It’s bounded on three sides by the Colorado River and much of it is in the 100-year floodplain. It has been used for decades as a sand and gravel quarry. 

Residents have many reasons to be alarmed about the plan. One of them, as Rather noted, is the lack of notice they received about it before its approval. People living near Dog’s Head repeatedly told the commissioners at Wednesday’s meeting they learned about the development just 48 hours before City Council voted on it. Because the development sits outside city limits, it did not go through the usual zoning and permitting processes, which would have brought scrutiny to possible environmental, watershed, and permitting issues. And as Suttle himself pointed out Wednesday night, the public has seen no details about what the company wants to build there. “We don’t have a formal presentation,” Suttle said in a prologue to the public comments, “because there’s not a formal project. There’s not a site plan.” 

Pastor has said that the company envisions building a large mixed-use development on Dog’s Head with residences, manufacturing companies, commercial businesses, and public parks. “We’re essentially building a city,” Pastor said at the meeting. Both he and Suttle described the current Dog’s Head as a “bombed-out” former quarry, pockmarked with huge pits dug down to the water table. Pastor repeatedly characterized Endeavor’s planned development as a work of restoration, saying, “We look forward to putting this back to its next life, which basically is restoring it.” 

The 50 residents who attended the meeting, including many living near Dog’s Head, disputed the idea that it is bombed-out. “I’m going to show you pictures of my backyard,” said Claudia Boyle, who lives on Hergotz Lane, across the river from Dog’s Head. Boyle then displayed pictures and videos on the commission’s monitors showing trees and dense vegetation along the banks of the Colorado, egrets, pelicans, a bobcat, a beaver, and a spring – one of many that she said still flows in the area. 

Others pointed out that Dog’s Head is a central flyway for migrating birds and demanded that the city, or Endeavor, conduct an environmental impact study and make it publicly available before moving forward with development. They asked why there were no representatives from the City Manager’s Office at the meeting to answer questions. “I’m really pissed that the city manager is not here,” resident Stephanie Hoffman said. “I will remember these things.”

After the public comments, it was the commission’s turn to speak. Their pushback was remarkable. “I can genuinely say that I’ve never seen in real life a more textbook example of environmental racism,” said Commissioner Isabella Changsut. “I’m so incredibly disappointed by both the city and the developer for not initiating communication with the public, not giving them a chance to have their voice heard, particularly impacting marginalized communities. I myself am a Hispanic woman, and I’m sick and tired of this on every scale and every level. It’s really hard for me to even put into words the disappointment that I feel.” 

Commissioner Martin Luecke said that he’d lived in East Austin for over three decades and had served as the president of the Windsor Park Neighborhood Association. “I have to say, I’m pretty offended that y’all didn’t reach out to any of the neighborhood associations around you,” Luecke told Suttle and Pastor, who sat 10 feet from him. “There’s really only one word for that, gentlemen: cowards.” Commissioner Annie Fierro asked the pair how many species would be affected by the proposed development. Pastor said he didn’t know but reiterated that Endeavor’s goal is to restore Dog’s Head. “Last time I checked, you cannot restore land with concrete,” Fierro responded. 

The final commissioner to speak was the chair, Mariana Krueger. She also challenged the description of Dog’s Head as a bombed-out, blighted mine pit. “I spent six hours there this past Saturday with neighbors touring as much of the Dog’s Head as I could on kayak and on land, every single road, and that is not what I saw,” Krueger said. “I saw turtles, I saw birds, gorgeous blackland prairie, all kinds of different species. I also talked to neighbors, and one in particular I want to invoke tonight, because I told her I would. Her name is Mary. She’s in her 80s. She first moved to the Dog’s Head in 1978 after the city displaced her from her home elsewhere in East Austin via eminent domain. And she’s very concerned that the same thing is going to happen to her again.”

When Krueger finished, Suttle and Pastor took questions and an important potential element of the development came to light. Throughout Wednesday’s comments, and in remarks during Council’s consideration of the agreement on May 21, residents sought promises that Endeavor would not allow data centers to be built on Dog’s Head. Council Member Mike Siegel asked Suttle directly about the possibility on May 21, requesting clarification of who the first tenant on the property might be. “I will tell you, it’s not a data center,” Suttle replied. The comment seemed to imply that such a use was off the table. That is not true. Krueger asked Pastor if he could give a public assurance that no data center would be built on the tract. “The user that we’ve got now is not a data center,” Pastor said. “But we’re not saying we will not do a data center in the future.”

Hanging over the comments by residents and commissioners was the question of how the city could slow down the Dog’s Head agreement. The next step in the process is for City Council to approve a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone for the area, a crucial part of the city’s agreement with Endeavor. Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones were created by the Texas Legislature in the late 1980s as a way of encouraging development in blighted areas. In a TIRZ, a portion of the property taxes which rise as an area is improved goes back to that area, and not to a city’s General Fund, to pay for things like roads and sidewalks. Council is scheduled to decide whether to create a TIRZ for Dog’s Head on July 23. In the unlikely event a TIRZ is not approved, city leaders fear that Endeavor will pull out of the agreement and develop Dog’s Head under county rules. That would result in the city having practically no input on the development. The city also would receive no property taxes from it. 

Susana Almanza, the longtime Eastside activist and leader of environmental justice group PODER, asked the commissioners at the June 17 meeting to recommend that Council reject a TIRZ. She told the Chronicle that a TIRZ would keep the property tax revenue generated by the Dog’s Head development out of the city’s General Fund, where it could be spent on social services. She agreed with others who argue the Dog’s Head development process would have been completely different if it were occurring on Austin’s west side. And she said that PODER is concerned about the impact of the development on the environment, but also to the people who live around Dog’s Head. 

“When you look at who’s living there and who’s the most impacted, it is communities of color,” Almanza said. “And we know that with the TIRZ, one of the aspects is it drives up the property values, and what comes next is the displacement that’s going to happen. We can already see it coming.”

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