City Hall, the bars and clubs, and now a big developer say “Maybe?”
"We need to talk about a re-tenanting. That doesn't mean running people off the street. The dance clubs, beer joints, and tattoo parlors are all perfectly legal and legit businesses. But people are surprised at how few daytime businesses there are on the street. ...
"I think it's great that we have clubs down there and live music venues and whatnot. But to the extent that we can get some daytime tenants there and businesses upstairs during the day – I just think any city in America would trade us [for that]."
Based on past experience, Austinites can count on a public outcry to clean up and transform the Downtown entertainment district along East Sixth Street every decade or so. The above quotes, envisioning a better day on East Sixth between Congress Avenue and I-35, are from former Mayor Will Wynn in 2001, when he was in his first term on the City Council, talking to the Chronicle's Jordan Smith about the district's troubles: "There are college-aged panhandlers, tattooed and pierced, wearing sagging jeans and old T-shirts, sitting against the Victorian limestone fronts of the street's numerous historic buildings," Smith wrote.
Nothing came of the efforts of Wynn, who at the time owned property on East Sixth, and a loose collection of bar owners and other stakeholders more than 20 years ago, just as nothing had come of efforts 10 years before that, after the Neal M. Kocurek Austin Convention Center opened its doors, to turn the blocks around East Sixth into a conference-friendly tourism district. That was about the time the Downtown Austin Alliance was first formed, with a charge to (among other things) do something about East Sixth Street. A 2003 plan spearheaded in part by the DAA also sought to move East Sixth away from its monoculture of shot bars, but only led to the creation of a public improvement district that has yet to change the street's trajectory.
Nothing likewise ever came of a grand $20 million public works plan in 2014 that looked to narrow the street to three lanes of traffic; install wider "festival sidewalks" to encourage outdoor use; and address electrical, water, and sewer issues in the aged buildings along the strip, hoping those investments would attract a more diverse mix of businesses. That plan fizzled at the initial design phase, in part because of changing budget priorities among the mostly new members of the first 10-1 district Council in 2015. The one holdover from the prior at-large Council, Kathie Tovo, has ever since represented the central-city District 9, which includes Downtown and East Sixth Street. (She will not run for reelection in November and has endorsed Linda Guerrero to succeed her in the D9 race.)
And so it goes. Most Austinites and many out-of-towners can tell you without much prompting what could be fixed about Dirty Sixth. Its high concentration of single-serve shot bars draws crowds of 20,000 or more on Friday and Saturday nights, when the street is closed off to traffic, creating a seven-block-long party with all the public safety issues one might expect.
Those used to be minor crimes against good order – underage drinking, brawls, petty theft. That's changed: People are now getting killed down there. A series of shootings over the past year has resulted in two deaths and more than two dozen injuries. In particular, the June 12, 2021, death of tourist Doug Kantor and the shooting of at least 13 others, allegedly by a teenager from Killeen, galvanized City Hall into adopting its Safer Sixth Street Initiative last summer. "We have to take action along Sixth Street," Tovo said last August. "If we can't effect any changes with this resolution, I'm just going to bring forward another one and another one until we get a safer situation down there."
The Safer Sixth Street plan includes specific investments in public safety and security, many of which have been accomplished at this point; at its June 9 meeting, Council agreed to buy and install 13 more high-activity location/observation (HALO) cameras on East Sixth, as well as to survey bars and clubs to see if they'd use handheld metal detectors if the city provided them. But the plan also, like its predecessors, seeks to promote more diverse, daytime, nonalcoholic uses to mix up the character of the district. And while that public conversation has gone on and on, one developer has been quietly assembling enough property to create that kind of change all by itself.
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What East Sixth Used to Be?
Since 2019, Dallas-based Stream Realty Partners has acquired 32 storefronts on both sides of East Sixth. It plans to find new tenants for some spaces, but in others it wants to demolish the existing structures and build new mixed-use properties that rise far above the 45 feet in height currently allowed in much of the historic district. The focal point of that strategy – with selected preservation of historic facades where needed – will be the 500 and 600 blocks of East Sixth, between Neches and Sabine, where Stream now owns all the properties on the north side.
In their presentation to the city's Historic Landmark Commission last month, company representatives painted a picture of the district alive with cafes and fine dining restaurants, retail and live music, and creative spaces frequented by workers in the offices it plans to construct. Attorney Richard Suttle, who is representing Stream's Austin interests, invoked long-gone memories of "what Sixth Street used to be, where you could actually go down and have a meal and see a show, or listen to live music," suggesting that Stream's plans will allow the district to return to that more innocent time. Stream's vision also includes fewer traffic lanes and wider sidewalks on East Sixth, along with ending the street closures that allow bar congregants to mill about late into the night on weekends.
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Who Pays for Safety?
Stream Realty's proposal comes amid the implementation of the Safer Sixth Street Initiative passed last summer. It's been a multipronged grab bag of safety-related actions: pushing to remove illegal weapons confiscated from bargoers; creating a set staging area in the district for police and emergency response teams to quickly respond to "unplanned activities"; a push for better lighting; and a complete overhaul of the current HALO camera network that could cost more than $800,000. Council's action on June 9 bought cameras to fill gaps in the HALO network but stopped short of the full-replacement option.
From a programmatic side, there have been efforts to allow cafe seating and other outdoor uses for businesses in the area, as exist along Congress Avenue, which is also a National Register historic district. The city's pilot program for that use is still in the conceptual phase. In general, Tovo has argued multiple times for more city control over what the bars and clubs on East Sixth can and must do from a safety perspective. In March, her Safer Sixth Street resolution directed City Manager Spencer Cronk to prepare code language that would create an entertainment license and safety planning requirement for "places of assembly operating in the 6th Street District with operating hours after 12 a.m."
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"Its Own Little Animal"
The idea of transforming East Sixth into something more resembling the Second Street District west of Congress Avenue – which includes City Hall, the W Hotel, the Moody Theater, 3ten ACL Live club venues within the latter, the Violet Crown Cinema, and a bunch of restaurants – has raised questions and eyebrows among local leaders and cultural observers. A look at the makeup of the weekend clientele shows East Sixth's crowds are among the most racially and culturally (and likely economically) diverse that one might see in nightlife areas within the city limits.
Trading out all or part of that audience would in theory disperse crowds of party-hungry young adults throughout the city, at the cost of what has become an Austin institution, even if it's one that in recent years has become soiled by violence and vice. After a Downtown Commission meeting that featured an update on efforts to lessen the number of shot bars on Sixth Street, Commissioner Nelly Paulina Ramirez expressed skepticism that the city would have much luck influencing private property owners.
And if there is any kind of coordinated effort to "change Sixth Street," she said, community groups on both sides of the highway should be able to weigh in on how that change takes place. "The question is, how do you walk back what is qualified as an entertainment district, which is in fact a drinking district?" she said. "There's a lot of desire for it to be something like what people think of as a cultural district. They want it to be more like the vibe of Congress and Eighth" – near the Paramount and Stateside theaters and the Hideout – "so they can catch a comedy show, a film, or see some theatre. There is no way to replace [East Sixth's] tradition without replacing the liquor licenses, and where do they go?"
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Who Owns the Block?
Since 2019 Stream Realty has, through vehicles with names like "SRPF B/Pecan Street II," acquired properties on both sides of Sixth Street, shown in orange on this map. Most of these are at the eastern end of the district, between Neches Street and I-35 (the 500, 600, and 700 blocks). Stream owns everything on the north side of the 500 and 600 blocks; the land alone in this stretch (approximately 1.62 acres) is valued by the Travis Central Appraisal District at just shy of $20 million, or about $275 per square foot. The existing buildings on those properties, which add up to a bit shy of 89,000 square feet, are valued at $6.3 million, or about $70 per square foot. Most of them have been substantially renovated over the years, although their facades may still merit historic preservation. Since 2012, the improvements have doubled in value while the land has tripled.
In a perfect world, the city would have been buying up property along the whole street to gain control of the future direction of the district. Now Stream Reality Patterns seems to be the entity holding, if not all the cards, at least the most cards. I do think raising the height limits, done correctly, on a small portion of properties would benefit the entire area. I still like the idea of a night food market. I think it would have a calming effect.
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