Austin: Zoning Panel Advances Senior Living Facility on West Side

Featured Photo (above): An Austin developer intends to build a non-assisted senior living facility on an undeveloped tract along Ranch Road 2222. Image: Google Streets

Posted: 11-25-19

By Edmond Ortiz

Austin (Travis County)–The city’s Zoning & Platting Commission voted Nov. 19 to recommend approval of a site plan in West Austin where a developer proposes establishing a 130,000-square-foot, 120-bed congregate care facility.

Austin-based HPI Champion Land Investors LLC seeks to develop the Solera Reserve on an undeveloped 45.3-acre tract at 6401 Ranch Road 2222. The senior living facility is to measure nearly 50 feet in height.

HPI Champion Land Investors LLC is attached to noted commercial developer HPI, which has offices in Austin, Dallas and San Antonio.

Solera Reserve would sit in an area next to hilltop single-family home developments in west Austin. Image: Google Streets

The development would include 74 surface parking spaces, water quality and utility improvements, construction of partial sedimentation/filtration pond and a tree mitigation plan.

Kimley-Horn & Associates is the project engineer.

The Zoning & Platting Commission on Nov. 5 approved a variance from the city’s Hill Country Roadway regulations, allowing the development’s footprint to remain smaller and more compact and resulting in a more environmentally sensitive design.

Documents about the proposed project do not contain an estimated construction schedule, cost or delivery method.

In the last few years, the same property was targeted for a multifamily development, but those plans did not get far.

The design for Solera Reserve also limits the amount of new construction on slopes around the project site, and minimizes impacts to residents in adjacent neighborhoods.

Some of those residents have written the city in support of the project.

“The developer is building in the flatter depth category, which allows the senior living project site plan to preserve the most trees, exceed the Hill Country Roadway ordinance requirements and minimize building on slopes,” Linda Bailey, Lake Austin Collective president, wrote.