Posted: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:27 AM - 10,059 Readers

By: Ralph K.M. Haurwitz

Place a half-dozen people passionate about West Austin at each of 10 tables. Give them colored markers and a map of the Brackenridge tract, a 345-acre parcel in that neighborhood owned by the University of Texas. Ask them to imagine its future.

That, in a nutshell, was the exercise that played out Wednesday under the guidance of Cooper, Robertson & Partners LLP , an architectural and urban planning firm hired by the university's Board of Regents.

The result was a grab bag of ideas:

Extend the city's hike-and-bike trail into the tract, perhaps with a portion as an elevated boardwalk. Remake Lake Austin Boulevard into a real boulevard, with more trees, bushes and pedestrian-friendly sidewalks. Consolidate graduate student housing to free up space for retail shops and public access to the edge of the Colorado River.

Enhance the biological field laboratory with a visitor center and more space for classrooms and research. Establish a center that would train UT students in leadership skills. Build housing for faculty members, students and retirees. Throw in a new elementary school and some trolley lines for good measure.

"You thought about a lot of things," Paul Milana , a partner in the Cooper firm, told the group in a bit of an understatement.

The UT regents are imagining a future of considerably more development on the Brackenridge tract, which would boost lease income that is used for faculty salaries, scholarships and other educational purposes. Now on the site are student apartments, the field lab, a grocery store, restaurants, a marina, shops, the Lions Municipal Golf Course, a youth recreation complex, an upscale apartment complex and the headquarters of the Lower Colorado River Authority.

Cooper officials allowed participants at some tables to redesign the tract from scratch, while others were told to retain or eliminate certain functions. Some of the participants chafed at the restrictions and found ways to retain favored uses.

Tommy Thomas, a psychologist who plays golf at Muny, as the course is known, said his table decided to move the student housing to the university's Gateway apartment complex a short distance from the Brackenridge tract. That opened up space for nine holes that would have been lost.

"The whole tract takes on kind of the feel of the Central Park of Austin," Thomas said.

Susan Rankin, executive director of the Trail Foundation , said her table retained all current uses but sketched in trolley tracks along Enfield Road and Lake Austin Boulevard, trails to the West Austin Youth Association complex and a leadership center for students.

David McGregor, a project team leader for the Cooper firm, said the workshop would help the firm fulfill its assignment of developing at least two conceptual master plans for the tract.

"We're getting ideas from people who live here and know the place. By itself, that's a plus," he said.

Perhaps on a more subtle level, the workshop and various other public sessions the firm has held could be part of an effort to get staunch defenders of the status quo to become more comfortable with the prospect of change. Velma Lee Guinn , who has lived in the same West Austin house for 58 of her 90 years, is willing to bend only so far.

"I liked a lot of the ideas we discussed," she said. "I want the golf course to stay as it is."

*  Story Contributed by: Ralph K.M. Haurwitz