Our Great News!

Family and Friends! We are moving into a rowhouse here in Austin sometime between October 2007 and mid-2008! That's a very broad time frame, we know; it was all the information we can get before we meet with our builder, David Weekly Homes, later this year. Take a look at the map. To give you a sense of scale, bear in mind that my drive to work right now is 25 minutes on an average traffic morning.

When Austin moved their airport to the southeast, it left the old airport a "greyfield" site, and the city has overseen its redevelopment into the proposed "urban village," named Mueller. That is where we're moving.

These days, the term "master planned community" means nothing because no developer would buy millions of dollars worth of land and say, "Come live in my unplanned community!" Instead they build a barely-planned community and call it "master planned" as a marketing ploy to sell the fast-food version of the American Dream.

But Mueller is different; its redevelopment has been rigorously overseen by multiple parties to the micro level, being awarded a Charter Award by the Congress for New Urbanism, the nation's premier authority on urbanism. Hopefully, I can touch on some of these things in future posts. For further interest, click here. But for now, let's talk about our future house. Take a look at the front of the building below.

Except for the trees missing in front, this is a pretty accurate image of what a rowhouse building block will look like. Each building will have groupings of four to seven rowhouses, using three different floor plans: the Longhorn, the Volente, and the Congress. We are hoping to get into the Volente or the Longhorn (no wisecracks, Kenny). Each rowhouse comes with a two-car garage, accessible from an alley in the back. I'll be showing more details of the floor plans in future posts.

And these are just the rowhouses designated "affordable." A multiplicity of houses with varying sizes and design features, built by a multiplicity of builders, are scattered throughout the community, creating an intentional diversity that would otherwise be homogenous in its appearance and socioeconomic demographic.

Anyway, I just wanted to give many of you a heads up, as you've been asking for more details. We are super excited and thankful to God that he's giving us this opportunity!!!