15-year zoning clash at end?;
Neighbors' concerns have blocked sisters' plans for family's land

Asher Price, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


It might not quite be Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the lawsuit at the heart of Dickens' "Bleak House," "so complicated that no man alive knows what it means." But the protracted struggle over the development of the 206-acre Champion property has left its own trail of musty documents and wearied witnesses as it sputters through successive city councils.

For about 15 years, a trio of elderly women, the Champion sisters, has tried to develop their land in Northwest Austin at the intersection of two state highways, RM 2222 and Loop 360 (Capital of Texas Highway). A set of persistent neighbors and a shifting City Council have blocked their plans with environmental concerns and worries about the effect on traffic.

At a council meeting today, an agreement hatched this summer between the city and the Champions will come up for a vote. But the agreement's chances appear dim: Some neighbors have put together a petition that will probably torpedo the agreement, and this long-running case might head back to the courts.

It's to be expected, in a way. The case has consumed city staff such as Jerry Rusthoven, who has studied the tract for more than a decade as a transportation reviewer, as a council aide and now as a manager in the neighborhood planning and zoning department. His office is full of cardboard boxes marked "Champion" that are stuffed with old zoning and traffic studies.

And it possesses residents and activists who have tromped through Rusthoven's office with their own duplication machine to make thousands of pages of copies, until the amount of material simply bled a couple of toner cartridges to death.

"There's one compromise agreement after another, and nothing is ever finished," Carol Lee, a member of the Glenlake Neighborhood Association, one of the groups battling the Champions, said this week as she left City Hall, where she was pressing council members to vote against the latest agreement.

In an e-mail subtitled "THE UNENDING AGREEMENT" that was sent to the council this month, she asked with exasperation, "Through how many lawsuits and mediated agreements can the Champions and their successors continue to accumulate benefits, exemptions, and special treatment without acting in good faith to develop their property?"

But through it all has been the determination of the Champion sisters, who sit together during city board meetings past midnight as their case drones on.

"I mean, they're staring out, totally stoic," Rusthoven said. "You got to give them credit. A lot of people would have sacked out, and they were just staring straight ahead."

Their family has owned the property since 1866, when Austin was just a cow town and the only road near the ranch was an old wagon way.

"People have come and gone, except for the Champions," said Michael Whellan, their lawyer.

He said one planning commissioner had called them "persistent and consistent."

"The determination comes from a place that they have been the stewards of the land for more than 100 years," he said. (His firm also represents the Austin American-Statesman.)

"We wouldn't keep going if we didn't feel very strongly about this," said Josie Champion, one of the sisters.

So tangled are the arguments by different parties that no explanation of the dispute can be complete.

The to-do dates at least to 1991, when the Champions sought zoning changes to some of their land, only to face bitter opposition by a neighborhood group. The dispute intensified in 1993, when an overhaul of environmental regulations effectively prevented development on the Champion property.

The Champions sued, and in a 1996 settlement, the city agreed to allow them to operate under pre-1993 rules. In the late 1990s, the Champions filed applications with the city to zone their property for multifamily housing, offices and retail, and predicted that the uses would produce 12,500 vehicle trips a day.

In 2000, however, under pressure from neighbors, the council decided to limit traffic to 6,500 trips each day. The Champions sued again, in 2004, claiming the traffic limit violated the 1996 deal because it would limit development on their property.

In August, the two sides reached a mediated agreement that declared a cease-fire to the lawsuits while the city considered new zoning for the property.

According to the mediation agreement, the new zoning would limit trips to 11,000 per day, back away from any setback or lot size limitations, establish a ban on big box retail stores and put a height limit on buildings (in addition to other height rules, no rooftop can exceed 820 feet above sea level) to preserve the views of residents.

Whellan said that no building on the Champion property would be taller than 53 feet. The Champions would also pay $120,000 to improve RM 2222.

The council approved the mediation agreement by a 5-2 vote, but in a first reading this month, the city passed the new zoning only 4-2-1 (Raul Alvarez and Jennifer Kim voted against the agreement, and Brewster McCracken, who had voted against it when it was ratified, was not at the meeting).

A wrinkle has developed: Some property owners near one portion of the Champion land have filed a petition that would require six of seven council members to approve the new zoning for that tract. But since the mediated agreement addresses all three tracts together, two of the council members would have to change their votes, or the case is probably headed back to court.

"I don't think it's the typical case," Whellan said.