West Campus zoning program set for changes as city plans density-focused upgrade

Austin’s West Campus neighborhood may be about to enter a new era of development, as city staff plan to update a special zoning overlay that has guided new building in the area since the early aughts, according to a presentation delivered by city staff to the Planning Commission during a meeting on April 8.

Under review is the University Neighborhood Overlay, or UNO, a special zoning district established in 2004 that covers much of the area immediately west of the University of Texas at Austin. It was designed to promote density, walkability and affordability in the neighborhood, which houses thousands of UT students.

Paul Books of the Planning Department, who gave the presentation on the proposed changes, cast them not as a fix to a failed program, but rather as an upgrade to one that’s already been successful. He cited the gain of 28,000 residents in the neighborhood since the original overlay was implemented.

That happened during a period in which the university’s enrollment-in-residence figure, which tracks the number of students taking classes at the university’s campus, remained roughly static at around 50,000.

The proposed changes to the overlay are broad, but the most dramatic focus on height limits for new developments and the redrawing of the overlay’s borders. The area covered by the overlay will expand to the west and north, and several subdistricts within the overlay that govern individual properties would see changes.

Those include the elimination of the Dobie and Guadalupe subdistricts and their replacement with a Transit Core subdistrict covering their former footprints, which will feature massively increased height limits. Currently, those subdistricts have height limits of 60 feet and 85 feet, respectively, while new developments under the proposed Transit Core subdistrict would have a height limit of 600 feet.

Height limits for the Inner West and Outer West subdistricts would also change, with the former seeing a bump from 300 to 420 feet and the latter seeing a mediation from a range of 50-145, intended to create a more gradual transition to the lower-slung homes at the edges of the overlay, to a flat limit of 90.

The proposal was spurred by a resolution passed by City Council in April 2024 that initiated amendments to the Title 25 of the City Code, also called the Land Development Code, and directed city staff to plan a number of changes relating to the UNO.

That resolution specifically called for height limits “that are similar to (those) that can be achieved with participation in the ETOD overlay, at minimum.”

Commissioner Joshua Hiller asked Planning Department staff about the reasoning behind the height limits, noting the large jump between the Inner West and Outer West subdistricts.

“How do you arrive at, ‘This is where we want to go tall and this is where we want to go half as tall?’” Hiller asked.

Books said that they had determined the heights based on an analysis of how developers had built under various zoning districts and concluded that most skewed either towards taller buildings made with concrete and steel, or shorter buildings made primarily out of wood.

“Those were the main things that developers were wanting to provide in the area,” he added.

It’s worth noting that zoning districts, including special overlays like the UNO, are not compulsory rules setting down what a developer must do, but rather offer different programs which the developer can choose to follow to receive certain benefits. Owners are also not required to redevelop properties under any particular zoning, even if the land use code is updated.

Pamela Bell, the president of the North University Neighborhood Association, said they were opposed to the plan and cited the increased height limits on the north side of the UNO, which would be expanded to overlap with the neighborhood under the proposed new borders.

“We do not have any housing higher than three stories in our neighborhood,” Bell said. “We don’t want such housing towering over the entrance to Kirby Hall School and looking out over Hemphill Park.”

Other changes proposed include affordability tweaks, bicycle parking requirements, changes to spacing rules for taller buildings and incentives to move car parking underground. Austinites interested in learning more about the changes can view the staff presentation online.

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Posted In: Planning, District 9