Chain Retailers

The Mueller Yahoo Group had a message today with a list of new retailers:

- Papa John's Pizza
- Starbucks
- Wachovia Bank
- Famous Footwear
- Old Navy
- rue21 (apparel)

Bleargh. From the group:

"Though many folks feel there is not enough local retail in the mix, the regional retail generates considerable sales and property taxes, all of which go back into paying for the infrastructure and amenities (parks and trails) at Mueller. No City of Austin general revenue money is being used to pay for Mueller's redevelopment. The planned Town Center at Mueller will strive to have more local merchants in a much more pedestrian friendly environment."

I buy that, and it's good that these retailers are just going into the "retail" portion along I-35. But I can't help thinking that now that these chains have a foothold, they'll be squeezing their way into the portions of Mueller that are supposed to be more "Austin". Especially Starbucks.

Don't do that, Catellus. Bring in a Cafe Medici or a Progress Coffee, or an Austin Java, or a Jo's, or ... the options are limitless.

And don't even get me started on Papa John's ...

It's Official

It's official: we have signed the contract for our new home at Mueller!

In celebration, we're casting off the thin veil of anonymity we'd been maintaining, and owning up to our real identities. I'm sure you're all dying to know. :)

My name is Ian Varley - I'm a musician and software developer (plenty more here if you care to read up). My wife is Jill Meyers (Jill works as the managing editor of local literary journal American Short Fiction, and will be posting on this site quite a bit as well).

Our builder is Standard Pacific, and our home will be in the Moore-Hill plan (I'm not going to state which specific lot it is, for privacy reasons, though I'm sure astute readers who are members of the community will eventually be able to figure it out).

Lots more to come as we go through the process over the coming year!

More Resources

In doing some research on the HOA (more on that later), we stumbled across a few resources that are starting to come about for this new Mueller community.

The Mueller Redevelopment Yahoo Group - a pretty active discussion list with lots of members (presumably, many or most of them are folks in surrounding neighborhoods; Jim Walker, the head of the local neighborhood alliance that was integral in the early planning stages from Mueller, is a frequent poster.)

Design & The Car Dependent City - A blog by an Austinite that talks a lot about urban planning in general, and Mueller specifically.

Flickr Photo Pool - An ongoing pool of photos of and about the Mueller redevelopment, started by Prentis Riddle. (Some really beautiful photography, too!) The photo at right was taken by Flickr user mirsasha. We'll use photos from that stream here whenever the license allows (go Creative Commons!) to make this blog a little easier on the eyes.

I'm sure there will be many more like these to come, but these are the first crop. There are lots of local real estate blogs that mention Mueller as well, but I'm sure you can find those on your own. :)

Howdy

Welcome to the Mueller Pioneers blog. We're a couple prospective home buyers who've entered the Mueller redevelopment lottery, and our hope is to use this blog to write about the process as it unfolds. Hope you find it worth a read.

Background: About a month, we got our lottery number, and it was a good enough one that it looks like we'll be buying a home at Mueller. We've selected a site and are going to contract this week, which is exciting. Much more to come as things develop.

One more note: this is not an official blog from the Catellus development group or anyone officially connected with the Mueller redevelopment. We're just a couple folks who are planning to live at Mueller, and we thought it'd be useful to collect & publish interesting stuff about the process. If you're looking for anything official, go directly to Mueller's site.