This past February, Kathleen Harrington, an Austinite living on Ramsey Avenue near 49th and Burnet, wrote to Scott Boone of the Zoning and Platting Commission to try to stop a luxury apartment complex from being built across the street from her home, on the site of the former Rosedale Elementary School.
“A 75-foot-high, six-story apartment complex directly across the street from our house would literally block the sun,” Harrington wrote, describing the planned development. “How do you imagine cars coming and going from over 400 apartments would work? It is inconceivable and ludicrous. Please have mercy. We do not oppose development; we are only asking that it be reasonable.”
The project Harrington protested is a collaboration between the Austin Independent School District and OHT Partners, a housing developer. Last fall, AISD signed a contract to sell OHT the 4.6-acre campus of Rosedale Elementary, a school that served students for eight decades before closing in 2022. The sale would net the school district $26 million and allow OHT to build a 435-unit apartment complex across from a row of single-family homes. The contract contains a catch, though: It specifies that AISD won’t receive the money until it gets the Rosedale site rezoned with the city to allow for multifamily housing…