GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Mixing 32 small two-story, for-sale detached single-family houses and 32 one-bedroom flats built over garages,
Chestnut Commons is a transit-oriented infill project in a diverse and gentrifying neighborhood a little over a mile
(1.6 km) east of downtown Austin, Texas. Characterized by compact lots, the project features common areas: a
large courtyard and a number of small, informal gathering spaces. Each of the 64 dwellings on the site has its own
garage, accessed by an alley or a sidestreet. Located behind the detached houses, garages are grouped in sets of
four per building. Atop each of these structures sit two one-bedroom flats. The entire 3.89-acre (1.57-ha)
development is under condominium ownership, in which buyers purchase the interior spaces, but the homeowners
association owns all of the outdoor space as well as the exteriors of the buildings.
BACKGROUND
Chestnut Commons is part of a larger development that was inspired by the desire of Tom Meredith—a former
chief financial officer at Dell Computer—to give back to his community. Purchasing 22 acres (8.9 ha) of unused
land in the at-risk neighborhood of East Austin, he envisioned a transit-oriented community that would improve
the character of the existing neighborhood, thus benefiting longtime residents as well as newcomers. At the
eastern edge of this property, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Capital MetroRail station is under construction as of fall
2008. Capital MetroRail’s Red Line will carry commuters 32 miles (51 km) from the suburbs into downtown Austin
when it opens in March 2009.
As part of Chestnut Commons’ development process, Meredith sold four acres of the site to the Austin Community
Foundation (ACF), a philanthropic nonprofit organization with a mission to improve the quality of life in Austin
through funding a broad array of services including community development. The ACF then sold the four acres to
regional development firms Momark Development and Benchmark Land Development in exchange for a portion of
the project’s returns.
The deal called for the developers to donate half of the project’s profits, once the project had exceeded a 20
percent gross profit. As of November 2008, with only two units in Chestnut Commons left to sell, the development
team has donated $1.1 million to the ACF. As of fall 2008, about $250,000 from this fund has been given to
Habitat for Humanity to repair existing housing for elderly residents in the surrounding neighborhood.
To develop Chestnut Commons, Momark and Benchmark created a limited partnership. In this partnership,
Benchmark brought its financial relationships and experience gained from leading the development of Plum
Creek—one of the area’s first new urbanist communities—to the table. Momark’s role in the process focused on
product development and marketing, as well as managing much of the site preparation and landscaping. Together,
the two firms hired Armadillo Homes, a homebuilder with projects in Laredo, Austin, and San Antonio, to build and
sell the residences.
THE SITE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS
Chestnut Commons is located near downtown Austin, in the rapidly changing neighborhood of East Austin, which is
bordered by Lady Bird Lake (a damned segment of the Colorado River, which cleaves through the middle of Austin)
to the south, Interstate 35 to the west, Airport Boulevard to the east, and 51st Street to the north. Originally a
community that was occupied predominantly by lower-income African American and Latino residents, East Austin
has been gaining in popularity with a whiter, more professional demographic. Ten years ago, the average house in
the area was worth about $40,000 to $50,000 and the price per square foot was approximately $60 ($645.83 per
sq m). As of fall 2008, prices there can exceed $300 per foot ($3,229.17 per sq m). The neighborhood’s proximity
to the campus of the University of Texas and to downtown has become a major draw for homebuyers, especially as
traffic worsens in the region.
As mentioned previously, Chestnut Commons is part of the larger 22-acre (8.9-ha) triangular property purchased
by Meredith. The Meredith property was originally owned by the Featherlite Building Products Corporation and was