AUSTIN, Texas — If you drove down the intersection of US 183 and East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard right now, you’d see a couple of gas stations and a Burger King but not much else.
“We have H-E-B, a convenience store,” Edwin Scott said.
Scott lives in a neighborhood near the highway. He said there aren’t really any commercial stores nearby.
“We need a laundry [laundromat]. You have to go all the way to Cameron Road, down on Airport Road, to get there,” he said. “We have a bunch of seniors that are here. That’s what you have in this neighborhood.”
But once, there was supposed to be more near this corner in East Austin.
Scott said he remembers seeing a structure behind the Burger King being built 40 years ago.
“I think they started to build something. I think they ran out of money,” Scott said.
He said the structure has sat unused ever since.
“It's a mess, to be honest with you,” he said. “They tag up the walls – I think people are living in and out of that, you know? It’s not a pretty sight”
Scott said he doesn't know what the half-built building was supposed to be – but CLD Realty President Sean Murphy does.
“It was meant to be a 30,000-square-foot retail center and [that] just never came to fruition,” Murphy said.
He said his company, a commercial real estate firm, wants to breathe new life into the property. Murphy said CLD Realty bought the property in 2020 from the previous owners, Morning Star Projects LLC. The group saw the potential past the graffiti and tattered roof.
“With the I-183 South Mobility project kicking off, we saw that I-183, at this intersection, was going to be 16 lanes. FM 969 is one of three major arterials that bring people from SH 130 into Central Austin,” Murphy said.
He said with 100,000 cars driving through a day, that's a lot of potential business.
Murphy added that future plans for the building will have retail pads along the front of FM 969. Then there will be multi-tenant retail buildings. One will be 10,800 square feet and the other will be 9,600 square feet.
“We’ve had grocery interest. We’ve had interest from a lot of service users. We’ve had interest from restaurants as well," Murphy said. "So, there’s been a lot of really great response from the community about wanting to bring services and good to East Austin."
He said the new plan is what the building deserves after so long.
“For it to become what it was always meant to be,” Murphy said.
He said it’s what the people in East Austin deserve, too. Scott agrees.
“Give me somewhere to go, somewhere closer,” Scott said.
Murphy said CLD Realty is very close to getting its site development permit from the city. Demolition of the current structure is set to be done within the next two months.
KVUE also reached out to Councilmember Natasha Harper-Madison, who represents the area. She said in a statement that she knows about the existing inequities and lack of investment in the northeast Austin area.
Harper-Madison said that through a partnership between the Austin City Council and Travis County commissioners, they’ve created a Northeast Planning District that aims to bring community-centric development projects to the area that neighbors and stakeholders can enjoy. You can read her full statement below:
"My office has diligently listened to our constituents about the existing inequities and lack of investment that our Northeast Austinites have experienced, and we fully recognize the existence of abandoned properties and food insecurity in this specific region.
We can comprehensively respond and bring our residents’ vision to fruition through the Northeast Planning District, a historic partnership with Travis County and specifically, Commissioner Jeff Travillion, who shares a similar and strong understanding of this region as well. This will be a community-centric and community-driven development, and we want these neighbors and local stakeholders to be at the table throughout the entire project as we collaborate and address these East Austin priorities such as economic development opportunities, food access, public health facilities, infrastructural needs, etc.
For these Austin residents, growth is critical for our small business owners, local artists and musicians, and anyone seeking career opportunities to live and thrive in this City, but we must strategize our planning around equity, accessibility, and sustainability, not just for the new homebuyers coming to Austin, but to ensure that our current neighbors who live in this area, can continue living there."
Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.