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BG Reads 2.5.2024

BG Reads 2.5.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - February 5, 2024

February 05, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

Presented by:

February 5, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 A Council bid to revive Blues on the Green

🟣 Fresh details on Austin’s light-rail plans emerge

🟣 Texas attracted more relocating businesses than any other state

🟣 Eagle Pass, the site of a tense border standoff, has become a “movie set"

Read on!

🟣 Click here for this week’s Austin public meeting times and agendas.

[BG BLOG]

✅ NEW - Five City of Austin Issues to Watch in 2024

🟣 Economic Development Incentives

🟣 Impacts of the HOME Initiative

🟣 Short-term Rentals

🟣 A 2024 Bond Proposal

🟣 Autonomous Mobility

✅ NEW - City of Austin org chart red line (as of 1/31/2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

City could step in to aid, revive Blues on the Green summer concert series (Austin Monitor)

The city could step in to provide financial assistance, fee waivers or other resources to the Blues on the Green summer concert series, which organizers announced last month was canceled for 2024 because of rising costs.

On Friday, Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison posted in the City Council Message Board that she plans to present a resolution at the Feb. 15 meeting to “solidify co-sponsorship” of the series that the radio station now known as Austin City Limits Radio has run for over 30 years.

The resolution directs the city manager to negotiate with the station and owners Waterloo Media an arrangement that would keep the concerts free, ensure a diversity of performers and observe the city’s scale of $200 per performer.

By Feb. 29, Council would expect to receive a resolution involving fee waivers, co-sponsorship guidelines or any budget authorizations needed to preserve the series...(LINK TO FULL STORY)

North Austin Radisson set for redevelopment (Austin Business Journal)

A vacant North Austin hotel is set for a rebirth, and its sprawling parking lots may be turned into mid-rise apartments.

ASAP Austin LLC secured permission from Austin City Council Feb. 1 to rezone the empty Radisson Hotel Austin - University a few miles north of downtown at I-35 and U.S. Route 290. The plan is to renovate the 293-room hotel into a new brand for Austin and add as many as 1,000 apartments and 40,000 square feet of commercial space to the 8-acre site.

ASAP Holdings is based in Pasadena, California, and steered by Chairman and CEO Frank Yuan, according to its website. His online bio states he has been involved in the buying of at least 39 hotels and partnerships with wealthy Chinese investors and state-owned companies since 2010… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Fresh details on Austin’s light-rail plans emerge as officials chase federal cash (Austin Monitor)

Austinites curious about the city’s light-rail future are being offered fresh details as the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) launches an in-depth environmental review in a bid to qualify for billions in federal cash.

The new information on the electrically powered 9.8-mile system isn’t nearly as revealing as the block-by-block maps and subway station cross-sections splashed online in 2021 and 2022. That was before local officials chopped the first phase of the project in half and killed the subway to slash costs.

But ATP is unveiling some big decisions that will have to be made and offering the public a handful of opportunities to speak directly with planners and engineers about the transit system, funded by a voter-approved property tax hike in 2020… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[BG Podcast]

Welcome to BG Podcast Episode 235!

On this episode the Bingham Group CEO A.J. Bingham and Associate Hannah Garcia wrap up the week of January 29th, 2024 in Austin politics.

Topics include:

🟣 Interim City Manager Garza's memo to the Austin City Council

🟣 First phase of Austin’s HOME initiative rolls out Monday

🟣 Austin City Council votes to extend police pay, benefits in lieu of contract

LISTEN ON: SoundCloud, YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify

[TEXAS NEWS]

Texas attracted more relocating businesses than any other state, report finds (Texas Tribune)

Texas gained more jobs than any other state in the previous decade from businesses relocating from other parts of the country, according to a report published Friday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

More than 25,000 establishments relocated to Texas from 2010 to 2019, bringing more than 281,000 jobs with them and resulting in a gain of nearly 103,000 jobs for the state, data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank shows.

Federal Reserve Bank senior economist Pia Orrenius said the report’s findings were similar to those of a previous one and that she believes the trend will continue in coming years.

The report said Texas appeals to relocating businesses for a variety of reasons, including its central location in the continental U.S., access to multiple large cities and business-friendly environment... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Eagle Pass, the site of a tense border standoff, has become a “movie set" (Texas Monthly)

If you happen to be looking for a place to stay the night in Eagle Pass, you’d be hard-pressed to find any available rooms within the city limits. The Holiday Inn Express is overrun with Florida troopers. The Hampton Inn has Texas National Guard forces and news crews out the wazoo. The hotels and motels have hiked their prices in the face of high demand: the Comfort Inn & Suites, a two-star establishment located downtown, recently posted rates starting at $400 a night for the weekend—more costly than some big-city luxury hotels (at the time of publication, the inn was completely sold out).

The border town of about 28,000 used to be the sort of place most folks had seldom heard of. If they had, it was probably because of the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino, located on a reservation some ten miles south of town—one of three casinos in the state. But over the past year and a half, Eagle Pass has unwittingly become a focal point of what passes for our national debate on immigration—first because of a massive migrant caravan, and now as the site of a supposed standoff between the federal government and Lone Star State over control of the border, with Republican officials in Texas and elsewhere inciting rumblings of civil war.

Nowadays, if you mention Eagle Pass to outsiders, they say, “Oh, y’all have all the immigrants, and y’all have the border buoys,” Humberto O. Garza, the public information officer for the Eagle Pass Police Department, told me. “I’m like, ‘Don’t remind me.’?” But the reminders are constant. Armed men dressed in camo patronize Sweet Tweets, a popular cafe that’s walking distance from the international port of entry. Residents appear unfazed when you tell them you’re a journalist. “We’ve just been bombarded,” Garza said.

“Usually we deal with four media sources”—two from Mexico and two local publications. “And now it’s CNN, ABC, CBS.” He added, “We’re in the news for all the wrong reasons.” On an afternoon in late January, a handful of news-media folks, myself included, lingered outside Shelby Park, the public land that abuts the Rio Grande. Previously a place where residents could play soccer or fish along the river, the park in recent weeks has been occupied by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Army National Guard, which are using it as a staging ground for their border operations.

After a record number of migrants crossed over the border into the park in December, Governor Greg Abbott called on state troops to occupy the space, erecting concertina wire and barring U.S. Border Patrol agents, arguing that the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to secure the river. An interim Supreme Court ruling favored the federal government, allowing troops to access to the river to cut the wire. Abbott pushed back by laying down more wire. The conflict has only continued to escalate… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

How Donald Trump went from a diminished ex-president to the GOP's dominant front-runner (Associated Press)

When he left the White House, Donald Trump was a pariah. After years of bending Washington to his will with a single tweet, Trump was, at least for a moment, diminished. He was a one-term Republican president rejected by voters and then shunned by large swaths of his party after his refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat culminated in an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that sent lawmakers running for their lives. Some members of his Cabinet had discussed invoking the 25th Amendment, seeing him unfit to remain in office.

He was banned from social media and became the first president to be impeached twice. And when he departed Washington, the nation’s capital was still reeling from his supporters’ violence and resembled a security fortress with boarded-up storefronts and military vehicles in the streets. Three years later, Trump is on the cusp of a stunning turnaround. With commanding victories in the first two 2024 nominating contests and wide polling leads in the states ahead, Trump is fast closing in on the Republican nomination.

The story of how Trump became his party’s likely nominee for a third straight presidential election is a reminder that there was an opening — however brief — when the GOP could have moved beyond him but didn’t. It shows how little was learned from 2016, as his critics once again failed to coalesce around a single alternative. And it demonstrates — with long-standing implications for American democracy — how Trump and his campaign seized on his unprecedented legal challenges, turning what should have been an insurmountable obstacle into a winning strategy.

“I think everybody got in the race thinking the Trump fever would break,” said longtime Republican strategist Chip Saltsman, who chaired the campaign of one of Trump’s rivals. “And it didn’t break. It got hotter.” Trump campaign aides say their first sign of momentum was not a legal victory or a gaffe by a rival, but a trip to East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023. Following a lackluster 2024 campaign announcement a few months earlier and slow start, the former president received a rousing welcome from residents demanding answers after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed, leading to evacuations and fears of air and water contamination.

Trump was briefed by local officials, blasted the federal response as a “betrayal” and stopped by a local McDonald’s. “It kind of reminded people what it was they liked about Trump to begin with,” said senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita. Trump, whose surprise 2016 victory had been fueled by angry white working-class voters who felt the government had failed them, was again casting himself as the outsider fighting big business and Washington. Biden didn’t visit at the time, helping Trump draw a contrast. He has accepted an invitation from East Palestine’s mayor to finally visit this month... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

The 2026 World Cup final will take place at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium (NPR)

The 2026 World Cup final will take place at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium to cap a tournament set in cities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, soccer's international governing body FIFA announced Sunday.

The final will be played on July 19 at the East Rutherford, N.J., stadium. Mexico City will host the opener of the 104-game tournament at Estadio Azteca on June 11.

During the event, though, the 82,500-capacity stadium will be officially referred to as the "New York New Jersey Stadium" to comply with the FIFA's policy against non-sponsor corporate names.

It's a World Cup of firsts. For the first time, the tournament will expand to include 48 teams, up from the 32 team-format held for the past seven tournaments. It will also be the first time the tournament is staged across three host nations. Beyond the New York-New Jersey complex, 15 other major cities were picked to host the World Cup matches... (LINK TO FULL STORY)