Council hears other ideas for McKalla Place

AUSTIN, Texas - Precourt Sports Ventures’ grand plan to build a Major League Soccer Park in north Austin sat on the back burner Tuesday afternoon.

At least for a couple of hours, while council heard from other developers who had 15-minutes a piece to pitch their ideas of what McKalla Place should look like.

“The nice thing about having alternative development proposals: if something should happen and there's no team to come to Austin then we're that much ahead of the game,” said Council Member Leslie Pool. 

Developers like John Chen and Marcus Whitfield presented their plan.

“What we're proud of with this plan is that it's a community for Austinites built by Austinites,” Chen said. “A purchase for $22.5 million or a lease for $2.5 million.”

Whitfield points out the site only became viable after the TCEQ recently gave it a “clean bill of health” so to speak after some explosions on the site.

“I think it's been an ongoing process to clean up that site since like the mid ‘90s but when Precourt announced their interest in it, I had been working on a deal locally in that same area for affordable housing and realized this site makes a lot of sense,” Whitfield said.

Their plan a multi-use development with more than 800 affordable units.

“Housing for seniors, housing for artists, housing for musicians. This is intended to address the problems that we've all faced in the Austij community in terms of affordability,” Chen said.

“We’re shooting for all affordable because again this is a city-owned property. It really should be for residents of Austin who need that and are being displaced,” Whitfield said.

Other plans presented Tuesday include “keeping Austin/McKalla weird” with food trucks, live music and affordable housing. And two different ideas from Capella Capital Partners one would see the MLS stadium at Circuit of the America’s instead and the other has an “if you can’t beat them join them” mentality...seeing the MLS stadium as a development anchor at McKalla Place.

“There’s some really interesting stuff that folks have come up with. Really interesting and creative and very 'Austin,’” Pool said. 

Council Member Pool says if Council seems to be favoring Precourt’s plan instead of a full RFP process for McKalla she’ll work to make the deal better. Pool has already introduced a number of amendments for example requiring Precourt to pay higher rent closer to market value.