Chestnut Commons

Chest Commons website www.austinchestnut.com

Terry Mitchell also developed Chestnut Commons.  This was particularly interesting to me as I am looking to develop cottage style housing in rural communities and this most resembles what I am envisioning.  This project sold out.  He created several flats above the garages and most all of them were sold to single women primarily because they felt safe pulling into the garage, closing it and walking upstairs to their home.

Another cool aspect of the development is it sits within walking distance of Downtown Commuter Rail.

My best take away from this project was how this development exudes land owner and developer giving back to the neighborhood/community. So here is the story: Chestnut Commons generated about $1.2 million for affordable housing projects in Central East Austin, including $250,000 earmarked for home renovations in the Chestnut neighborhood. The money was a result of an unusual arrangement among the landowner Tom Meredith, developers Terry Mitchell and David Mahn, and the Austin Community Foundation.

Meredith, a former chief financial officer for Dell Inc., and his wife, Lynn Meredith, bought 30 acres between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 13th Street in 2003 as a philanthropic project aimed at helping the Chestnut neighborhood improve without pricing longtime residents out. Meredith initially planned to team with Mitchell and Mahn to build low- to moderately priced housing on four of the acres one mile east of downtown. But the cost of cleaning up the site, which once housed a construction material company that built pre-cast concrete structures, pushed building costs too high. So in 2006, Meredith decided to donate the land to the Austin Community Foundation, which then sold it to Mitchell and Mahn for the appraised value of $450,000. The developers agreed to donate a portion of the profits from the condo sales to the foundation to be used for affordable housing efforts in Central East Austin.

How's that for giving back?

J2M