Austin City Council Member Jennifer Kim announced Monday that she will support a resolution opposing the potential development of the 141-acre Lions Municipal Golf Course, a part of the UT-owned Brackenridge Tract.
The resolution requests that UT seek input from the city and West Austin residents in planning for development of the tract.
"There are a lot of people who have really enjoyed that golf course," Kim said. "It is a historical golf course and it's
irreplaceable."
According to Kim's statement announcing her support, the resolution will be voted on by the council on Nov. 8, which falls a day before the UT System Board of Regents meeting, where concerned community members will have time to address the board.
Kim said the University has not sent representation to the city neighborhood planning meetings, thus excluding the city and West Austin residents in the initial planning process.
"I think they need to include the city because all the efforts the city has made to get information and reach out to them have been ignored," Kim said.
The city of Austin is one among many stakeholders in the 345-acre tract's future, which has been debated since the land was donated to the University in 1910 for educational purposes.
The tract sits on the banks of Lady Bird Lake just west of MoPac Expressway. In addition to the golf course, it includes 515 graduate and married student apartments, restaurants and an 88-acre biological field lab, the site of some of the College of Natural Science's most respected ecological research.
Earlier this month, the Brackenridge Tract Task Force recommended that the UT System regents, who manage the tract, hire a planning firm to develop a master plan for its development. The 10-person task force was organized by UT System Chairman James Huffines in July 2006 to assess the site's value and recommend alternative uses for the land.
In its 80-page report, the task force concluded that the affordable student housing is "not the highest and best use of the land" and recommended that the city's lease with the golf course - due to expire in 2019 - should not be renewed.
The city offered to buy the golf course from the University last year. Kim said the offer still stands but that the city cannot afford the price that the UT System is requesting because it is estimated based on the value of the land's possible commercial development and not as a golf course.
She also said the course, which has been there since 1929, is an important part of Austin's history and that development of the land to fund educational purposes would not justify shutting it down.
"I think there are ways that UT, with its huge endowment and as a holder of public lands, could find other funding for higher education," she said.
Since the release of the task force report, the land's lucrative potential for commercial real estate development has created a stir from West Austin residents, real estate developers, UT science faculty and students who live on the tract and do research at the biological lab.
The task force report did not call for the removal of the field lab but said the necessity of the lab's current size and location is not clear.
"By the task force leaving [Brackenridge Field Lab] on the table, that's a strong statement and that's an important statement saying that this is something we have to be competitive," said Larry Gilbert, the lab's director for 27 years.
The lab is home to the integrative biology department, and many professors who teach classes or do research at the lab say it's what places the department's ecology program in the top 10 nationally.
In the statement announcing her resolution, Kim did not address the field lab but said that elimination of UT graduate and married student housing "is just not acceptable."
Burke White, a doctoral candidate in Spanish and Portuguese, lives in a three-bedroom unit in Brackenridge Apartments with his wife and two children and pays $710 per month with bills included. He said if the apartments are torn down, the University should provide housing elsewhere.
"It saves students a lot of money to have student housing," White said. "Most of us have kids, and are married, so it's important for us to have an affordable place to live."
Kim also spoke on behalf of the West Austin residents, who along with the city, have been "essentially shut out" of the initial planning process, she said.
Gwen Jewiss, president of West Austin Neighborhood Group, said in an e-mail that most West Austin residents would "prefer things stay as they are."
"I don't want to imagine a worst-case scenario but will say that development without planning, both land use and financial, would be disastrous," Jewiss said. "Based upon the recommendations of the task force, I do not see the University overlooking such issues."
UT System Spokesman Anthony de Bruyn said "it would be premature to speculate or comment" on Kim's resolution and that the system will welcome comment from any concerned parties at its next meeting on Nov. 9.
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