This spring, dozens of Circle C residents filled seats at Austin City Hall to speak against a rezoning request most of them had only started tracking a few weeks earlier. One man stood up and told the Zoning and Platting Commission that the traffic study behind the project relied on a computer model instead of real counts on the ground. Another resident, Andrew Leeper, put it more bluntly: developers were proposing to put 3,000 cars on a road that runs past an elementary school.
The commission listened, then sent the request forward anyway, trimmed down but still alive. That's where things stood heading into summer. Since then the City Council vote has been postponed once, and the version most residents think they're fighting isn't quite the fight that's actually in front of Council now.
The Land Was Already Spoken For
Here's the part that gets lost in most of the coverage: Tract 110, the 67-acre property at the southwest corner of MoPac Expressway and State Highway 45, was never going to sit empty. Under the 2002 Circle C Development Agreement, the site is already entitled for up to 650,000 square feet of commercial office space. That entitlement has existed for more than two decades, long before most current residents bought their homes.
Stratus Properties, the developer behind the original Circle C build-out, is now asking the city to swap that office entitlement for something different: up to 1,000 multifamily apartment units, plus retail and neighborhood commercial space.
| Current entitlement (2002 agreement) | Stratus request | |
|---|---|---|
| Use | Commercial office | Apartments, retail, neighborhood commercial |
| Maximum size | 650,000 sq ft | Up to 1,000 units |
| Status | Already approved | Under City Council review |
The question isn't whether Tract 110 gets developed. It's whether it becomes an office park or a residential complex. That distinction matters because it changes the entire conversation. Office buildings on that corner would have brought commuter traffic concentrated at rush hour. An apartment complex brings a different, more constant traffic pattern, plus a few thousand new neighbors who'd be splitting time between Circle C's roads and its schools.
What Changed Between July and September
The Zoning and Platting Commission's spring recommendation wasn't a straight yes. Commissioners sent the request to Council with a lower unit cap, less commercial square footage, and less impervious cover than Stratus had originally asked for. That's a meaningful detail: even the body that approved moving the case forward wasn't comfortable with the developer's first ask.
The Council vote was originally set for July 23. It didn't happen. District 8 Councilmember Paige Ellis, who represents Circle C, asked for the delay so the city could gather more traffic data before anyone votes. Ellis has said she hasn't taken a position on the rezoning itself, but she met with representatives from the Protect Circle C Coalition, city transportation engineers, environmental experts, and attorneys on June 15 to talk through the proposal before making that call. The case is now scheduled for the September 10 City Council meeting, which gives residents a defined window rather than an open-ended one.
The Argument Is About the School, Not the Skyline
Most of the public comment at recent hearings hasn't been about apartments as a concept. It's been about one intersection: the road near Kiker Elementary School.
Resident Alicia Keswani described the current situation to a local news crew this way: cars already back up to the intersection near La Crosse Avenue most school mornings. Her husband, Nick Keswani, has raised a related point, that adding a thousand new units nearby would change a traffic pattern that's already stretched during drop-off and pickup.
Here's where the story gets more specific than the headlines suggest. Stratus's own proposal states there would be no vehicle access from the development onto Dahlgreen Avenue, the street that runs closest to Kiker Elementary. If that holds, the apartment complex's cars wouldn't be routing directly past the school on that particular road. The louder concern, based on what residents have said publicly, is less about a single access point and more about overall trip generation landing on La Crosse Avenue and Escarpment Boulevard, the corridors families already use to get kids to school and get themselves to work.
Amy Rupp, another resident who's spoken at hearings, has pointed to a different kind of proximity concern: the tract sits across from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildfire Center, which raises questions about how added density interacts with that adjacent land, separate from the traffic conversation entirely.
Lisa Lyons, a member of the Protect Circle C Coalition, has summed up the group's position without dressing it up. Nobody's surprised development is coming to that corner. The objection is to a specific version of it, one they've called irresponsible given the access point near the school and the overall scale relative to what's already there.
What You Can Actually Do Before September 10
If you live in Circle C and this is the first you're hearing the details, you still have time to act, but not a lot of it. The Protect Circle C Coalition has organized an e-petition for residents to submit directly to City Council, updated as recently as late June to reflect the current version of the proposal. The group's site also tracks hearing dates and source documents for anyone who wants the underlying filings rather than a secondhand summary.
A few things worth knowing if you're deciding whether to weigh in before September 10:
- The vote is a City Council decision, not a commission recommendation. Public comment at Council carries different weight than it did earlier in the process.
- Councilmember Ellis has explicitly said she's gathering more traffic impact data before the vote. That means the data submitted between now and September could still shape the outcome.
- The commission's earlier revisions, the lower unit cap, reduced office square footage, and reduced impervious cover, show that the request is negotiable. This isn't a binary yes or no on 1,000 units.
None of this requires you to have an opinion on apartments in general. It just requires knowing that the decision in front of Council on September 10 is narrower and more specific than "should this land be developed." That question got answered in 2002. What's left is a much more local argument about traffic counts on La Crosse Avenue, a school zone on Dahlgreen, and how much weight the city gives to a neighborhood that's been organizing since spring.
Circle C has always described itself as a finished, self-contained community, oaks along the streets, sidewalks connecting to the Swim Center, Grey Rock's fairways on one edge. Tract 110 is a reminder that even a neighborhood built out over three decades still has open questions sitting right at its border. Staying current on those questions, not just the amenities, is part of what it means to actually live somewhere rather than just own a piece of it.
If you're weighing what a rezoning like this might mean for a specific street, a specific home, or a move you're already considering in Circle C or elsewhere in South Austin, Heart of Austin is happy to talk through it. Contact us anytime.
