By LESLEE BASSMAN, Four Points News

Changes are coming to the Grandview area of Four Points. About 94 acres of undeveloped property off Wilson Parke Avenue near RM 620 is readying for sale while the 7-acre tract at 12001 Vista Parke Dr. is in the early stages of development to bring up to 70 condominium units to the site.

Wilson Parke site

SAS Institute, Inc. owns the 94-acre site at 11920 Wilson Parke Ave. and is seeking to rezone the property surrounding its facility from Interim Rural Residential to General Office, according to applications filed Nov. 16 by property owner representative Drenner Group with the city of Austin.

The rezoning process is being done “in an effort to prepare (the property) to sell and show the potential for that land (to) developers,” confirmed Desiree Adkins, corporate public relations manager for SAS.

Currently the property houses a 60,000-square-foot office building that was built in 1989, prior to the project being annexed into the city of Austin, documents show.

SAS anticipates moving its Austin location into a new space at 1801 E. 6th St., Adkins said.

“We have space on the East end of Austin now that we are moving into in April,” Adkins said. “So we no longer need this land because we are leasing this new space in Austin.”

Headquartered in Cary, NC, SAS develops and markets a suite of analytics software, these tools help access, manage, analyze and report on data which helps aid companies in decision-making.

The filings include rezoning an approximately 80-acre campus (SAS Campus II) consisting of three tracts of land—a 10.54-acre parcel, a 2.26-acre parcel and a 67.48-acre parcel—as well as an approximately 14-acre campus (SAS Campus I).

The property is accessible from Wilson Parke Avenue and no additional access to the property is being proposed, according to filed documents.

A traffic impact analysis was performed by Big Red Dog Engineering that anticipated several proposed build-out scenarios for the entire 94-acre tract, the filed documents state.

The land is situated in Austin City Council District 6, within the boundaries of Council Member Jimmy Flannigan who stated the SAS Institute zoning application is consistent with its existing land use on the property. He said the case is in the city’s initial review phase that includes a TIA and will go through public hearings before the plan is considered and discussed by Council.

“Right now, we’re waiting for city staff to complete its review and to provide a recommendation,” Flannigan said. “I look forward to discussing this case further as it goes through the public process.”

Adkins said she may be able to provide additional information about plans for the tracts “once the land is officially on the market.”

Vista Parke condominium project

The adjacent 7-acre tract at 12001 Vista Parke Dr. is slated to be developed into a condominium neighborhood with up to 70 units, said Scott Morledge, founder of Ash Creek Homes, the project’s developer. The project, that does not yet have a formal name, has been approved for SF-6 zoning by Austin City Council, a category that allows single family residences and condominium residences, he said.

“Our normal product is condominium residences,” Morledge said. “We met with the neighborhood groups in advance, went through the zoning proposal and got their support.”

He said Austin Water has also given approval to provide water and wastewater service for up to 70 condominium units on the project.

Originally, the first conceptual plan for the complex included 75 percent of the total units as attached townhomes and 25 percent as detached townhomes, Morledge said.

“That is just an internal document we are circulating to see what that looks like, to see what it means for the trees and how we can move buildings around to save these trees,” he said of the initial plan.

The first meeting between the developers and the company’s land planning architect is scheduled for next week, during which building footprints will be laid out to code specifications, Morledge said.

Although he said he does not have a site plan for the project, the group will have a much better idea “of what the project itself will look like” by the middle to end of February.

“The steps we’ve taken so far are all of the precursors to doing a site plan,” Morledge said. “If we begin to prepare a site plan before we have zoning in, and if for some reason we don’t get zoning, then we’ve just wasted a lot of time and money. So we take these steps in order.”

For more information, go to one of Leslee Bassman’s previous stories on this subject.