Benificient developer just wants to help the city by gifting an acre of waterfront property and building a public access trail through existing buildings. Warms the cockles, it does.

"Extending the Town Lake Trail: For this site, the Parks Department has a signed agreement that developer CWS will: 1) dedicate as parkland the 25-foot strip of land along the shoreline and 2) construct an extension of the trail within that parkland. But while the parkland is shown here, it does not appear in the site plan submitted to the city (site plan B). Nor does it appear in an alternate version (site plan A) being shown by CWS. The developer wants the required 200-foot building setback (A) reduced to an 80-foot setback (B) to make room for a much denser residential complex. CWS has threatened to build A – without the trail or parkland, leaving existing apartments in place – if it doesn't get its variances. "

and

The 100-unit figure [the number of existing units] was contained within a December 2005 subdivision application. ... Staff expressed irritation that the developer failed to provide the correct 486-unit number [the number of proposed units] in extended discussions. ... The developer's apparent underreporting potentially could cheat Austinites out of new waterfront parkland worth millions. ... "It's not a gift; it's what they owe. If they want to get their project approved, they have to dedicate the land as parkland."

posted by mrflip at 11:18PM CST on October 02

Thinking about all the politics in play here makes my head hurt. The Austinist posted about this today as well. 

posted by luloutoo at 11:54AM CST on October 03

I don't know if this was luloutoo's intended link, but I do know that it seems to point out that splatnikGanglion fell for some astroturfing from the evil developer. 

posted by natedogg at 01:43PM CST on October 03