The Battle for Barton Springs
A determined developer’s big plans for Austin’s cool, clear water hole is bringing out extremes on both sides.
A determined developer’s big plans for Austin’s cool, clear water hole is bringing out extremes on both sides.
He changed the face of Texas by building warehouses that looked like office buildings. Then he built office buildings that looked like warehouses.
Up for sale in Dallas, the Shanbaum house boasts a whopping 28,000 square feet and what may be Texas’ most comprehensive collection of sixties and seventies kitsch—along with a $2.75 million price tag.
When Bames-Connally Investments announced plans to build apartments in a South Austin neighborhood, the residents banded together to try to stop them. They won the battle but lost the war.
It’s a high-rise developer’s dream. Houston’s old guard wants to turn 34 acres of downtown warehouses into an island of classy shops and pricey condos. They thought they had it wired, until Kathy Whitmire was elected mayor.
Outside the back door stretches the lonely prairie; there is deep silence broken sometimes by gunshots and things that go bump in the night. But here on the edge of Dallas’s suburbs, you can always retreat to the whirlpool in the bathroom.
Everybody knows the story about the young Texan who goes into business, works hard, and makes millions. But what happens when his luck runs out?
And hello to high prices, high interest rates, high rents, and a new low for the American dream.
Behind the gleaming facades of many new apartment villages are the crumbling walls of next year’s urban blight.
Give us your tired and freezing Yankees, your studious Arabs, your ambitious young hustlers just blown into town, and we will rent them one bedroom and a bath for $215.
When is a wall not a wall? When it's a work of art.