Daily Archives: 05/02/2008

(Community Matters) Joined Terry Mitchell and David Mahn at their table along with Will Meredith on behalf of the entire Meredith family for today’s Envision Central Texas Community Stewardship Awards. Our Chestnut Commons development here was one of two finalist for the redevelopment award. The other finalist was Catellus & the City of Austin for the Robert Mueller Airport Redevelopment. Not surprisingly, the Robert Mueller Development project won – nice company to make it to the finalists with!

Greg Weaver accepting the Redevelopment Award

Taylor Andrews accepting the New Development Award for the 360 Condominiums, Andrews Urban & Novare Group

Rep. Mike Krusee accepting the Pioneer Award

Super community leader, Pete Winsted received the W. Neal Kocurek Legacy Award

Keynote speaker: John Fregonese

John gave the keynote, a presentation mostly on trends. Some interesting tidbits I recall: Austin’s average age is 34yo vs a national average of 38. The US population is growing faster than at any other time in history. There will be 100 million new Americans by 2040, 70 million more in 10 cities – Austin is one of these. In Portland, bicylcing rivals mass transit as a utlized source of transit. It costs little to nothing. [I’m reminded what Mayor Krom said yesterday: critics complain about the per capita user costs of mass transit but ignore the equal or higher costs of roads and auto transit]. People in Portland spend 15% of their income on transit (2nd lowest after NYC). People in Houston spend 23%. “A vision without action is a hallucination.”

Congratulations to all the award winners.

btw, PeopleFund was a finalist for the Pioneer Award for pioneering its land trust, PeopleTrust.

(Community Matters) Steven and I made the Fuse Box rounds last night, attending Stacked Cow & Other Dances at Salvage Vanguard, Masturwork at Mexi-Arte and Reggie Watts at the Long Center.

Choreographer Deborah Hay & ST at Salvage Vanguard

At Mexi-Arte for Masturwork. It was especially fun to see their work since we’ve met most of these artists from Mexico City.

Maximo & Raquel Olvera

Soledad Labaca Gonnet

Soledad & Maximo’s partner, poet Ivan Buenader

Finally, at the Long Center we were joined by several guests to see the “tornado on a stage,” Andy Kaufman award winner, Reggie Watts.

Reggie Watts – ck him out here

Lily Saad and Barbara Engel

Kimberly & Dan Renner

Festival producer Ron Berry & Angie Carter

Others who joined us for Reggie Watts: Yigal Saad, Carla & Jack McDonald, Kristi & Scott Eckert and Jill McRae & Stephen Yelenosky.

(Community Matters) First time to the Mexican American Cultural Center last night. It’s located in the Rainey Street neighborhood, just west of I-35, south of Cesar Chavez Blvd.

(Community Matters) PeopleFund sponsored a lunch presentation by Irvine, CA Mayor Beth Krom as part of its PeopleTalk series yesterday at the Alamo Drafthouse. Mayor Krom is a UT alum who’s lived in Irvine since 1985 as a teacher, business owner, mother and now mayor. She created Irvine’s land trust to promote long-high quality affordable housing. Mayor Will Wynn was on hand for introductions.

PeopleFund has launched its land trust (PeopleTrust) – under the governance of a support organization overseen by Margo Weisz, Jim Walker, Mike Cook and Don Kendrick and run by Kelly Weiss (attorney & former manager of city housing programs). We run the affordable housing programs for Matt Whelan and Catellus at the Robert Mueller Airport development.

Mayor Krom, Kelly Weiss, Margo Weisz

Lots of friends in yesterday’s audience including Carol Thompson, Hank Jones, Henrietta and Adrian Neely, Debbie Ramirez, Sean Garretson, Stuart Hersch and Cathy Echols. Tom Terkel and RECA co-hosted the dinner honoring Mayor Krom.