Old Town, Georgetown Texas

Here are the arguments that can win the fight against the Hat Creek application for a special use permit. This comes before council for the second reading on Tuesday, June 26th. On Thursday, June 28th, the matter comes before HARC for the Certificate of Design Compliance. Most of the arguments that can be used at […]

Council is tomorrow evening, and the Hat Creek Burger Company will either be issued its special use permit to destroy neighborhood safety and property values around 4th & 5th Streets, Main and Austin Avenue, or else denied same, depending how the struggle goes. Either way, we have to show up and lend support if we […]

On Tuesday , January 25th, the City Council will review proposed changes to the UDC that currently control how people work out of their homes. There are two main schools of thought – regulate or don’t regulate. There are also two different geographic views: regard the Old Town Overlay District as a distinct area to […]

By Ross Hunter Well, friends, we went down to the council meeting, and we won a major success. We walked out of there with the greatest sense of triumph I’ve felt in several years. It was a historic night, a grand watershed event. It was a decisive battle in the campaign to restore Georgetown to open government. […]

By Ross Hunter Council is tomorrow, about 24 hours away, and I’m inviting you to attend the session. If you haven’t read the weekend Sun you should pick up a copy anywhere you can and get an exhaustive overview of the numerous allegations made lately against our city attorney, along with comments from most of […]

[Editor’s note. This story is reproduced under a Creative Commons license granted by its author, Ken Martin, of The Austin Bulldog. The story here is stripped of its original formatting, graphics, and links to its many sources – and the source materials are especially useful. Original links are NOT indicated here – and there are […]

[Editor’s note: this story is reproduced under a Creative Commons license granted by its author, Ken Martin, of The Austin Bulldog. The story here is stripped of its original formatting, graphics, and links to its many sources. Original links are shown in red here. We encourage you to click through to the original story at […]

By Ross Hunter In a landmark test for Georgetown, following a hearing before the Zoning Board of Adjustment on Tuesday, December 15th, the historic Leavell House at 803 College Street will not now encroach upon its property line setbacks, thus avoiding the “McMansion” effect feared by neighbors. The 130-year old mansion can be seen from the […]

By Ross Hunter Tomorrow evening’s meeting of the Zoning Board of Adjustment has on its agenda the fate of the historic Leavell House, 803 College Street, at the corner of Eighth and College. The house is 130 years old with a magnificent aspect, visible from the square looking down the length of Eighth Street to the […]

By Ross Hunter Electronic retail signs along Georgetown’s frontage roads will be coming soon if the Council approves an amendment to the UDC proposed at tomorrow’s meeting. This meeting decides if our frontage roads will remain scenic or start looking like Round Rock. Your attendance is important. Simply showing up is valuable because numbers matter. […]

By Ross Hunter The Georgetown City Council on Tuesday night broke its own law. Council voted 4-2 to overturn the legitimate decision of HARC, the city’s Historic and Architectural Review Commission, without hearing any new evidence. This was a violation of Title 17 of the Georgetown Code of Ordinances, the Unified Development Code, or UDC. […]

In this picture you’re looking at a sign that Merrill Lynch wants to tack up on the Tamiro Plaza’s wall on Austin Avenue, 2.5 feet tall, and lit up at night and weekends – to advertise that it’s closed! Merrill asked HARC – our Historic and Architectural Review Commission – to amend the Master Sign […]

This letter was sent to the Williamson County Sun on Sunday, March 23, 2007. By Ross Hunter Wesleyan Retirement Center on University Avenue has been sold for redevelopment, but where we had hoped to see an exciting new amenity for Georgetown, we now face the prospect that a designated historic home will be physically relocated […]

Georgetown residents are invited to attend a brief neighborhood meeting on Sunday October 8th, to discuss the upcoming City Council motion to abolish HARC, and ways and means to fight the great Square giveaway. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and ends at 8:30 pm. The meeting is at 705 East 3rd Street (between Walnut […]

On the Agenda for the Georgetown City Council meeting this Tuesday, October 10, is the proposal to replace or abolish HARC. If this matters to you, show up and show support. Sign up to speak, even to give your 3 minutes away to another speaker.

That’s right, on the very Square itself, City staff are preparing to destroy the last ten years of history and hard work, and they will do this by interpreting in a completely new way the set formula that calculates the maximum size of sign that a building can have. The formula allows approximately one square […]

THE MEETING OF SOME RESIDENTS OF OLD TOWN On July 27, 2006, through the hospitality of George and Barbara Meyer on Third Street, approximately twenty-five residents of Old Town held a meeting to discuss the Holly Street Bus Terminal, a proposal by City staff to change the zoning of a portion of Old Town for […]