What are we talking about?

We have all seen the growth of our neighborhood. Two high-rise upscale student dorms have mushroomed up on San Antonio Street, on the block just north of us. There are eight more construction developments in our area already approved and on the books. UT’s Rowling Hall, now under construction on the corner of MLK and Guadalupe, will have a huge impact on our area. Marriott has announced it is constructing a 320-room luxury hotel on the property where McDonald’s now sits at the corner of MLK and San Antonio St.

Here at St. Austin, our ministries, staff and students suffer from aging facilities that are not adequate for our current needs. We are plagued by crumbling infrastructure and challenging repairs and upkeep to our basic systems – heat and air conditioning, plumbing, electrical, our telephone wiring, a network patched together across concrete walls, and our elevators are all in bad shape. There are some issues we are not even able to address because of the age of our buildings and the expense associated with renovation or replacement of systems.

The real estate market around us is hot right now, and as good stewards of our gifts, namely the property on which we sit and the many blessings of time, talent and treasure we receive from you, our parishioners, we want to explore if this is the right time for us to do something here, on our property, or not. We do not have the means within our community to raise tens of millions of dollars to build the new, safe, energy responsible, tech savvy facilities that St. Austin Catholic Parish deserves. So the obvious solution is to look for outside funding. Namely, outside funding via a ground lease to a developer who would propose ideas to meet the needs of the parish and provide an ongoing income stream to assist with the ministry of the parish for the next couple of generations.

Let me be clear: NOTHING has been decided. A bright committee of parishioners, school parents and parish staff is exploring the potential of a development deal. The exploration we are doing now will let the developer market propose their best ideas, and we get to sit back and see if anything looks right to us. THEN we as a community can decide if we want to move forward.

If you'd like to learn more about this project, check out the resources on this page. Let us know your thoughts or questions by emailing our Development Committee. We welcome your input.

God Bless,