Council considers MLS, Veterans Day parade and the death of CodeNext

Tonight is the night Austin soccer fans have been waiting for since late last year when Anthony Precourt announced he was interested in moving the major league “Columbus Crew” here to our neck of the woods. Council is expected to say yay or nay to the plan.

There are still plenty of people, Council Membersincluded, who are just not ok with this deal that would allow Precourt Sports Ventures to come in and build on City-owned land near the Domain called McKalla Place. Precourt will foot the $200 million bill for the 20,000 seat open-air stadium.  

According to the term sheet recently released, the team won’t pay property taxes but they will pay about $550,000 a year in rent starting on the sixth year.  

“We’re here today on a ‘emergency’ soccer stadium, come on, really? You’re going to rush a soccer stadium subsidy? And not allow people to vote on this? This is involving hundreds of millions of dollars. People should have the right to vote on these things,” said Linda Curtis with Indy Austin.

“There’s been 10 months of negotiations, there’s been an open and transparent process of negotating the deal and it’s on 24 acres of land that has sat empty for 24 years. It’s a good use of the land it’s great for Austin,” said Josh Babetski with MLS In Austin Supporters Group.

Aside from soccer, one of the more controversial items, Council agreed to not give fee waivers to the Veterans Day Parade if the parade honors any veterans other than United States veterans — obviously that would exclude Confederate groups that are often a touchy subject at the parade.  

Council members Troxclair and Houston voted “no.”

“If you come and ask for fee waivers you go through a process and some people get them and some people don’t and so I’m not sure why we went outside of that process to single out a very specific group of people who — I may not agree with but they have a right to participate,” Houston said.

And just a week after the death of CodeNext began, today Council officially laid it to rest. Code Next is the big re-write of Austin’s land development code. Millions of dollars were spent on it but as the Mayor put it the process has gotten to be “divisive and poison.” Council has decided to do away with it...and start over.