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- BG Reads 2.28.2025
BG Reads 2.28.2025
🟪 BG Reads - February 28, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
February 28, 2025
âś… Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 As office vacancies soar, city leaders and businesses adjust to keep downtown Austin alive (KUT)
🟪 Council sets the stage for more short-term rental regulations, with tax collection to begin in April (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Huge mixed-use project along Colorado River gains steam (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 Texas leaders quiet amid the biggest measles outbreak in decades (Texas Tribune)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
🏛️ Austin Council Regular Session (2.27.2025)
🏛️ City of Austin Memo: Federal Legislative Update / Potential Reductions at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (2.26.2025)
[FIRM NEWS]
Today, NASCAR Cup Series driver Kyle Larson and Truck Series driver Rajah Caruth will join sponsor Hendrick Automotive Group—the largest privately held automotive retail organization in the United States and a Bingham Group client—to award a $25,000 grant to the Auto Technology program at Crockett Early College High School.
The donation is part of the Hendrick, Get Set. Go! grant program, which leverages the excitement of the HendrickCars.com racing program to promote STEM education in the automotive industry.
The event will include a check presentation, a Q&A session, and an engine-building demonstration.
Check out Hendrick’s Austin Dealerships:
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
âś… As office vacancies soar, city leaders and businesses adjust to keep downtown Austin alive (KUT)
Since the pandemic, more people are working from home than ever before, leaving many offices in downtown Austin vacant. Now, city leaders and developers are trying to figure out what to do with that empty space to keep the area from becoming a graveyard.
Office vacancies in Austin are at an all-time high, according to a report from real estate adviser CBRE. Jenell Moffett, chief impact officer with the Downtown Austin Alliance, estimates between 20% and 25% of office buildings downtown are vacant.
“There has just been a lot of supply that has been delivered to the market and downtown," she said. "And while leasing continues, these major organizations and corporations are taking up less space.”
Fewer people working downtown means fewer people getting coffee or going out to lunch. As foot traffic has slowed, Moffett said, restaurants, coffee shops and even parking garages have had to adapt to when people are still around — at night and on the weekends… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Council sets the stage for more short-term rental regulations, with tax collection to begin in April (Austin Monitor)
​​The city will soon begin requiring platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo to collect and remit Hotel Occupancy Tax revenues on behalf of short-term rental properties, marking the first in a number of expected changes in the industry.
The change, which goes into effect April 1, is aimed at closing loopholes that have allowed thousands of unlicensed rentals to operate without paying taxes. While City Council largely agreed on the necessity of tax collection, the broader discussion on STR regulations, enforcement and implementation timelines proved more contentious.
Council members debated whether the new policies would open the door for a surge in short-term rentals, how they would impact affordability, and how enforcement technology could be used to identify unlicensed operators. Along with requiring STR platforms to follow through with hotel tax collection, Council approved two other resolutions that set the stage for the passage in the fall of greater regulations and enforcement mechanisms for STRs.
Those changes will in large part hinge on possible moves by the state Legislature this summer that could further limit the city’s options for restricting the operations of STR sites… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Pease Elementary to reopen as a child care center, bringing kids back to the historic Austin school (KUT)
A map of the U.S. painted on the basketball court at the former Pease Elementary School in downtown Austin has seen better days. The vibrant colors have faded. Even Texas is a muddled mix of yellow and gray.
But Austin ISD has a plan to breathe new life into the historic campus that's been closed for nearly five years. The school board voted unanimously last month to lease Pease to United Way for Greater Austin. The decision came nearly a year and a half after the board approved a proposal to partner with the nonprofit to open a child care center at Pease.
The initial term of the lease is 10 years and can be renewed for another 40. United Way aims to open the early childhood education center in 2027 with the capacity for about 130 kids from ages six weeks to five years old. Children of Austin ISD employees and families will get priority. The chance to reopen Pease was a welcome development for School Board President Lynn Boswell… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Council solidifies transparency in labor talks over APA’s opposition (Austin Monitor)
City Council on Thursday approved a resolution reaffirming the city’s transparency policy in labor negotiations, despite objections from the Austin Police Association president.
The one-page resolution, introduced by Ryan Alter, reiterates the city’s policy that meet-and-confer and collective bargaining discussions with public safety unions are publicly recorded and broadcast. It also ensures that documents exchanged during these meetings remain publicly accessible. Additionally, the resolution directs the city manager to seek Council approval for a waiver if any party in the negotiations wishes to deviate from this practice.
“I think it’s really important that we have as much transparency around our public safety negotiations as possible,” Alter said in response to APA President Michael Bullock’s testimony in opposition to the measure.
“It’s what we’ve always done until our most recent negotiations,” he added, referring to last year’s APA negotiations, when some details of a proposed agreement were withheld. Council passed a controversial $218 million police contract in October on a 10-1 vote after hours of public testimony… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Huge mixed-use project along Colorado River gains steam (Austin Business Journal)
Developers are getting closer to kicking off the first phase of construction for a massive mixed-use development along the Colorado River in East Austin.
A site plan for the first phase of San Antonio-based Kairoi Residential’s Bolm Riverfront District, a 115-acre mixed-use project planned at the current site of a concrete factory along Ed Bluestein Drive, is now under review with the city of Austin.
In recent years, Kairoi has focused largely on sky-high developments downtown. It recently finished Sixth & Guadalupe — Austin's tallest tower — and it's now working on the next tallest tower in Austin and all of Texas, Waterline.
For its land in East Austin, the site plan filing is specifically for the first phase of development for the district’s eastern half. There will be 410 multifamily units across four apartment buildings in the first phase, with 369 units to be leased at market rate and 41 units to be leased at or below 60% of the median family income.
The initial phase will also include the renovation of an existing building for food and beverage uses… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
âś… Texas leaders quiet amid the biggest measles outbreak in decades (Texas Tribune)
Texas is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades, as cases have jumped from two to 124 in just one month.
A child is dead, 18 more are hospitalized and the worst is likely still ahead, public health experts say, as Texas’ decreasing vaccination rates leave swaths of the state exposed to the most contagious virus humans currently face. State and local health officials are setting up vaccine clinics and encouraging people to get the shot, which is more than 97% effective at warding off measles.
But neither Gov. Greg Abbott nor lawmakers from the hardest hit areas have addressed the outbreak publicly in press conferences, social media posts or public calls for people to consider getting vaccinated.
State and local authorities in West Texas have not yet enacted more significant measures that other places have adopted during outbreaks, like excluding unvaccinated students from school before they are exposed, or enforcing quarantine after exposure… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
âś… Bezos focuses Washington Post opinion section on free markets and liberties (BBC)
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has announced that the newspaper's opinion section will focus on supporting “personal liberties and free markets", and pieces opposing those views will not be published.
The move, which marks a major shift away from the section's broad opinion coverage, prompted the outlet's opinion editor David Shipley to resign. Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, sent a memo to staff on Wednesday which he also posted to X.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defence of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,“ Bezos said.
He added the opinion section would cover other topics, but “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others”.
“There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views,” Bezos wrote. “Today, the internet does that job.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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