Mixed-use developments are especially useful for cities going through periods of growth, Hutto City Manager James Earp said. The diversity of housing, work and entertainment allows cities to find middle ground between suburban sprawl and urban skyscrapers, he said.
Two-minute impact
Capland Development, formerly known as Harris & Straub, has worked with landowner Steven Wolfe over the last two years to bring The Gateway at Hutto to fruition, real estate developer Jake Straub said.
Wolfe hoped to bring a live-work community to Hutto but didn’t know if his vision was feasible, Straub said. Along with Robert Deegan, principal landscape architect with Rialto Studio, Capland put together a plan for the site at the corner of East Wilco Highway and CR 137, leveraging the new highway.
“The positioning on both sides of the East Wilco Highway lends itself to a more dense development,” Straub said. “Not just a traditional single-family [neighborhood] out in the boonies, but [it] makes more sense to do something dense and a little more urban.”
The planned project, characterized by a gateway bridge over the nearby lake, will be an anchor for the city’s entrance, Deegan said.
Preliminary designs show a commercial sector with retail and dining, as well as a hotel and conference center. The team also proposed a range of residential options and open green space that connect through trails.
With a growing demand for new housing and entertainment options, the city has quickly become a popular destination for people looking to build, and The Gateway at Hutto group is not the only development team hoping to bring a project to town.
The master plan for the Gateway at Hutto includes:
- 12.7 acres of townhomes (125 units)
- 67.7 acres of single-family residential (285 units)
- 29.2 acres of multifamily residential (730 units)
- 57.6 acres of mixed-use commercial (includes office, hotel and conference space)
- 73.5 acres of open space
The details
The project team presented the vision for Gateway at a Feb. 20 City Council meeting.
“We knew that we needed to align with the city, and luckily what we had proposed and envisioned for this site fell exactly in line,” Straub said. “We’re just trying to create something that I don’t think Hutto has today.”
In addition to funding traffic improvements to defer traffic impact fees, the Gateway team intends to request annexation into Hutto to receive water and wastewater services from the city.
However, City Council voted recently to give more thought when expanding Hutto’s water boundary, Mayor Pro Tem Peter Gordon said.
“Because water is such an uncertain thing in the future and we know that it’s a limited resource, we want to be just really thoughtful about where we’re expanding,” Gordon said.
The new development would use more than 2,000 living unit equivalents of water. LUE is a measure of the typical water use of a single-family home. Hutto’s water usage sits at about 60%-65% of the city’s physical resources, Earp said.
Resident Alison Gersch has concerns about the sustainability of Hutto’s growth, especially when it comes to water. However, she also sees benefits of Gateway, like connecting to parks and trails in Hutto and potentially reducing traffic.
“The mixed-use is a good idea because you do cut down on the amount of people who are driving, ideally,” Gersch said.
What’s next
Capland has also discussed connecting to Manville Water Supply Corporation, Straub said. Although it would be slightly more expensive to obtain water from Manville, he said it would not be “a deal-killer issue.”
The developer plans to move forward with the project regardless if the city annexes the land or not, Straub said.
If the city chooses not to annex the land, then it cannot capture property or sales tax revenue, Gordon said.
Meanwhile, the city has other callers lining up. Developer ATX Capital has proposed a 94-acre site—with retail, multifamily and light-industrial space— in Hutto’s ETJ and is requesting to tie into the city’s water.
