Austin and Capital Metro find failure in Transit Oriented Developments
COST Commentary: The story below indicates Austin is following in the path of so many cities which have painfully discovered the glowing promises of ‘Transit Oroented Development’ (TOD) to be very exagerated and false. TODs, in general, have not been financially successful, have not increased the tax base of cities and have not been a major boost to transit ridership.
Austin’s Capital Metro opened its first commuter rail transit line with optimistic projections of TODs near several stations. First, the ridership on the commuter train of approximately 400 people per week day is less than one-half of that projected by the transit agency resulting in taxpayers subsidizing each daily round-trip rider with $40,000 per year. The commuter train has resulted in no new develpments for the communities which it serves.
Massive $400M transit-oriented development scrapped
Austin Business Journal – by Francisco Vara-Orta Staff Writer, Thursday, September 16, 2010, 7:37am CDT
A 326-acre, $400 million project with housing and retail development at Lakeline Station announced four years ago has been scrapped, according to brokers working on the deal.
The entire swath of land in Williamson County near Lakeline Mall has been entirely reclaimed by its owner, Bill Savage, who now plans to keep it as a working cattle ranch, according to Tim Riley, one of two brokers in the Austin office of Land Advisors Organization who represented Savage.
In 2006, Savage sold the land that was his family’s longtime ranch to a California company named Pacific Summit Partners that planned the development called Lakeline Station. With 2,700 homes, 150,000 square feet of retail space, a proposed elementary school, and about 43 acres of park and open space, it had been touted as one of the first large projects along Capital Metro’s commuter rail route.
But Pacific Summit Partners, which was an Austin division of Irvine, Calif.-based Summit Properties, went bankrupt in 2008.
Savage then foreclosed on 141 acres of the tract that year and recently acquired the remaining 185 acres for an undisclosed price, Riley said. Riley’s Austin-based colleague Carlotta McLean of Land Advisors Organization also worked on the deal.
Homes reportedly are selling well in the area and the Metro Rail line is now up and running, but the Lakeline Station project is off the table it seems.
Now living in California, Savage plans to move back to Texas and live on the property, which will remain undeveloped for the foreseeable future, the brokers said.