Where and What is Mueller’s Town Center?

Mueller’s Town Center will kick off with the ground breaking of Austin Children’s Museum. Following that will be the Austin Playhouse, and the location is really cool. I have trouble looking at maps and getting my bearings, so more often than not, I end up triangulating between large objects. In the case of the Town Center, you can see several towers from the center.

It’s across Simond Avenue from the largest of Mueller’s parks – Lake Park, and it will border Section 6 of the development – the new homes due in 2012. In the center itself will be some of the Shop Houses – the vertical mixed-use idea of having a retail storefront downstairs and living space above. The first of these would arguably be the Pecan Street Inc Mueller Demonstration House over on Berkman and Antone, though the first publicly available will be in the new town center.

It’s worth checking out the Mueller Design Guidelines to get a feel for what is envisioned for the Town Center – some of the key phrases are:

• Walkability – an area on a scale that can be traversed on foot
• Identity – it seems that when people think of Mueller right now, it’s often of the Browning Hangar, the Control Tower, or the Home Depot. It will be interesting to see that change over time.
• Connectivity – somewhere central to the neighborhood and accessible to surrounding areas via bike, foot and planned transit
• Authenticity- the tenants to include local business and for the area to have Austin character – which could mean anything from hippies to hi-tech
• Diversity – not just shopping, but living and entertainment
• Convenience – configured for access by residents and employees alike

Personally, I can’t wait to see the empty fields be used for more than just parking overflow for the myriad of Mueller events. Get in touch if you want to know more about live/work opportunities or new homes. 512.215.4785