Austin @ Large: Strictly Need to Know

I have an idea. It's not mine -- I stole it from another city I happened to be visiting last week. A best practice, if you will.

The city is Vancouver, which in most ways is not much like Austin, starting with being in a different country and all. (With its ultra-high-density downtown -- 50,000 residents in an area a little larger than the UT campus -- and complete lack of freeways, Vancouver might be what some want Austin to become, but that's not the point here.) This idea might not, in fact, work all that well in Vancouver. But it would work here to solve a recurring and nagging civic problem in Austin.

In Vancouver, on any site that's been proposed for development, you'll find a large sign -- I'd say 3 feet by 4 feet, but I wasn't carrying a tape measure -- on each street frontage. You can't miss 'em, and there are plenty of blocks sporting them. This is the official notification given to neighbors, stakeholders, and passers-by that somebody wants a zoning change or a variance or even, I think, just a building permit. Some signs simply refer to "permission from the city of Vancouver," without citing a specific code requirement. Some of the projects discussed on the signs seemed to me -- even with my Austin-honed sensitivities -- to be smaller than would normally garner the public's attention. (One was for a 1,000-square-foot addition and the removal of one parking space.) But maybe I missed the controversial part.

Or maybe there is no controversial part -- this is just what Vancouverites expect. As that example suggests, these signs are crammed with a lot of data -- the exact use, square footage, height, number of floors, number of units if it's residential, number of parking spaces, and so on. (Despite French being an official language of Canada, and Chinese being an unofficial language of Vancouver, the signs are in English only.) If it's a redevelopment, the sign puts the project in context of what's currently there ("The project would expand the current 4,321-square-foot building to 5,678 square feet ..."). If that means changing the zoning or getting a variance, this is duly noted and explained.

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Call Me a Lawyer

Passersby can also learn if the building is historic, or if the developer has cut a deal with the neighbors for shared parking, or something like that. The sign includes a map showing the exact boundaries and dimensions of the project (both the parcel and the building envelope); sometimes it shows the uses and owners of neighboring properties as well. And it includes the developer's name and the relevant number to call at Vancouver City Hall to find out more. Basically, in Austin terms it's the site plan, distilled into narrative form and, as it were, shouted from the rooftops.

Battle-scarred neighborhood veterans probably already understand why I find this bit of civic furniture so intriguing, but let me make it plain: In Austin, neighborhoods have to hire lawyers to find out what in Vancouver is posted on a sign that anyone can see. I now know as much, maybe more, about ongoing projects in a city 2,500 miles away as I do about a project proposed for the end of my own street in Austin. And I'm the chair of my neighborhood planning team, and city editor of this newspaper, which means I have a little better access to this information than most citizens. It should be accessible to all. In Vancouver, it is.

In Austin, an actual sign is only posted on a property when there's a zoning change request (it's green for historic zoning, otherwise yellow). Said sign is about the size of the paper you're reading right now, and there need be only one, even if the property is a couple hundred acres. It has a space for the case number -- "C-14-2009410" or whatever -- though it isn't always provided. To learn anything else, you have to call somebody at One Texas Center, where these city functions live, and hope you get the right somebody and ask the right questions.

If you live within 300 feet of the property, or are the contact person for a neighborhood group in the city's Community Registry whose boundaries are within 300 feet of the property, you'll get a letter from the city telling you who the requestor is and what they want to change the zoning to, but not the project details. That still takes the right phone call to One Texas Center, or hiring a lawyer or consultant to do it for you. These letters are sent only in advance of a scheduled public hearing -- at a city board, usually the Planning or the Zoning and Platting Commission, or the City Council -- which could be months after the project was first submitted to the city. A variance would go to the Board of Adjustment, and in my experience notification of cases before the BoA is, uh, inconsistent. For a regular site plan approval or building permit ... yeah, right. You'd be getting letters from One Texas Center every week. You know how much that would cost?

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Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

A lot more than it would cost to simply put the information neighbors want to know on a sign at the site itself. (Even if the developer had to pay that cost, they already have to submit a kajillion copies of this same information, in much greater detail, to the city. What's the added expense of a couple of pieces of foam-core?) This would also streamline the Community Registry, which neighboristas know is packed like Spam with groups that don't exist in any normal sense, but which want to be listed precisely so they'll get those letters from One Texas Center.

Since anyone can go down to City Hall and, quick as a biscuit, become a "neighborhood leader" by filling out a form, the notion of "stakeholding" in Austin is often a bit distorted. We've seen many backs broken -- on both sides of Austin's development line dance -- because of disputes over notification and inclusion of the relevant stakeholders. Vancouver seems to have found an elegant solution. If these signs are up for months, or however long Vancouver's city review takes -- here, it takes months -- any real "stakeholder," and probably a much larger cohort of real stakeholders than Austin currently reaches with its notification, will know what's going on. This might be unattractive to developers, but who cares? It's public information.

How do we start doing this here? Toby?