Master planning East Avenue, a 23-acre, mixed-use development, involved more than 80 meetings with stakeholders over the course of a year.  The site, an ideal location for increasing density near Austin’s urban core, became available when a small college relocated.  The East Avenue community will re-inhabit the site with moderate-income rental housing, condominiums, retail, medical offices, a boutique hotel, entertainment facilities, an urban park and a plaza.  The neighborhood will center on a lively, pedestrian-oriented street lined with retail.  Two public open spaces, both located to preserve mature existing trees, will punctuate the street. Sustainable design features will include continuous bioswales to treat  storm water, more than two acres of green roofs, and an efficient central energy plant to provide steam and chilled water for the whole project.  PageSoutherlandPage is designing several buildings within the development, the first of which completed construction in fall 2009.

When it was completed in 1984, the Town Lake Comprehensive Plan was the largest planning project ever undertaken by the City of Austin. Its purpose was to consolidate park lands and useful recreation space through selective land acquisitions, thereby creating an active new “living room” for the heart of the city. The plan also located future civic functions and performance venues and outlined zoning overlays to guide development on both sides of the lake. The planners held more than 200 meetings with stakeholders, neighborhood groups, political leaders and the general public over the two years of the study. Larry Speck was co-principal of the effort with Clarence Roy of Johnson, Johnson and Roy Landscape Architects.