Buda City Council unanimously approved the 775-acre development agreement on first reading with amendments Feb. 6.
The background
The development is located in Buda and Austin’s extraterritorial jurisdictions, or ETJs, which are unincorporated areas of land outside of a city’s limits that a city can annex either to control development or expand its tax base, according to the Texas Municipal League.
The project has been contested by residents and council over the years due to worries of an influx of traffic and the development's impact on the city's utilities.
The city, MileStone Community Builders and Persimmon developers have been working together to revise the proposed development agreement since July 2022.
Council adopted a nonlegally binding term sheet in September, which outlines priorities and requirements for the development. But council tabled the development agreement in October because the dais was not ready to accept the document as it stood, according to previous reporting by Community Impact.
The breakdown
The Persimmon development is slated to have 2,300 residential units, including townhomes, according to agenda documents. There would be no apartments or multifamily homes.
About 40 acres of land for the development would be used for nonresidential commercial use, with 15 acres reserved for a school and 3.5 acres donated for a Fire/EMS site, according to agenda documents. Persimmon would be financed through a tax increment reinvestment zone, or TIRZ, and a public improvement district, or PID.
What happens next?
Even if council approves the development agreement, it is still conditioned on the following:
- Release of property from Austin’s ETJ
- Voluntary petition to request inclusion in Buda’s ETJ
- Council approves the development agreement's requested zoning
- Voluntary petition of annexation into Buda
- Buda approves PID, TIRZ and issuance of PID bonds
"Staff will be continuing to negotiate those terms with the developer," Grau told Community Impact.
The development agreement will come back for a second and final reading at a future meeting date.
