Aerial view at night of downtown Austin, Texas with buildings and lights visible.
Smith Collection/Gado/Gado via Getty Images
MYSA
By Chris O'Connell
ACL Fest is over, but festival season has just begun in Austin. Regardless, the amount of new, large events will remain the same in the city's downtown streets.
Earlier in October, the City of Austin extended a moratorium that prohibits new downtown street events. The indefinite moratorium was made official in a memorandum from Development Services Department Director José G. Roig and Transportation and Public Works Department Interim Director Richard Mendoza.
In the memo, the two outline the need for a continuation of the moratorium, which first went into effect on November 25, 2014, and has been extended on an annual or bi-annual basis in the almost nine years since.
Essentially, downtown construction and growth has made it so that new events could further impede mobility in the region. The memo notes that this applies to the Downtown Austin Project Coordination Zone, which is bounded by Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard to the north, Oltorf Street to the south, MoPac to the west, and Chicon Street to the east.
The memo says that two major construction events set to begin in 2024 necessitate an extension of the moratorium. Project Connect, Capital Metro's expansion program, will begin to relocate utilities next year. And Mobility35, a portion of TxDOT's I-35 Capital Express Program, is also set to begin construction in downtown Austin in 2024.
First amendment and free speech events, like protests, will not be affected by the moratorium, and, as outlined in the recent memo, smaller events could be granted an exception upon review by the Austin Center for Events program manager and the Austin Transportation and Public Works Department director.