CodeNEXT Comparison Map

[David Ivy]

The City of Austin just published a website to compare zoning updates proposed under CodeNEXT to existing zoning.

Check out the website here. Have you noticed anything interesting? It looks like at least one of my properties could be negatively affected by the proposed change. Story from KXAN here.

[Bryan Hancock]

I sit on the CodeNext committee for ULI and have spoken to a lot of specialists familiar with things of late.  I had lunch with the AIA committee president for this today too.

The problem is the neighborhood plans.  Unless these are unraveled all of this window dressing won't matter.  The city also has major problems with how infrastructure is financed.  Some of these structural issues will really prove problematic unless they're changed.  From what I have seen it doesn't look very promising that any of this will change.  

One good thing that is likely to happen is streamlined review of permits where a developer can get all departments in a single spot to get feedback.  This will reduce pursuit cost uncertainty in theory, but based on my past experience with the city I am pretty cynical about things changing.