#defendriverside

We are excited to announce that the Riverside Arts District tent, which they refer to as 'The Pop', has been taken down and Almost Real Things has moved their $30 a ticket 'Block Party' away from the lot!

The Riverside Arts District is a project of the Austin Creative Alliance and Presidium Group, the developers trying to tear down 1400 units of student and worker housing in order to build a ‘Domain on Riverside’. Defend Our Hoodz alongside Riverside tenants have called for a boycott of the arts district to fight the attempts to make Riverside the next ‘hot’ area for real estate investment that will displace more and more working-class Austinites.

Multiple artists honored the boycott and took their name off the lineup. We especially thank Kiko Villamizar for making a strong statement against the Arts District. Chulita Vinyl Club left the lineup but still will not acknowledge the organized boycott or the community fighting the 'Domain on Riverside'. 

The arts district sellouts such as Almost Real Things, pump project, Austin Creative Alliance, and others are realizing that Riverside is going to put up a fight against gentrification, and it won't be as easy as the gentrification of North of the river over the past two decades. There, many of these same middle-class, mostly white artists exploited the working-class mostly Black and Chicano communities for the cheap rents while sidelining the existing community. Once they helped raise the profile and value of real estate for developers, they want to cry that they are victims of displacement and are trying to move South. This time, they are explicitly working with the developers from the start so they can make sure they're taken care of while the working-class community of Riverside gets kicked out.

We won't let them. We have picketed their events and dozens of artists are standing with the people and joining the boycott. Now is the time for everyone to fight back against the wealthy developers who play games with our communities. The people must unite and organize against the attempts to make Riverside the next playground for the wealthy.

Artists must pick a side! When you collaborate with developers, you aren't 'trying to make it', you're stepping on the working-class and serving yourself. Art should serve the people, not wealthy developers!

As tenants at Ballpark and Town Lake Apartments organize to defend their homes, the rezoning application threatening to turn their land into a new ‘Domain on Riverside’ slowly but surely makes its way through the city’s review process. In other Austin battles against redevelopment, communities have typically used this period of bureaucratic evaluation to prepare for the city commission hearings, the legally-sanctioned venue to voice dissent against rezoning cases.

City staff are often treated as impartial employees just doing their job, but they are an integral piece of the tsunamis of redevelopment that are flooding out our communities. Which is why today, Defend Our Hoodz and tenants from the Riverside area visited city offices to tell them to say ‘No’ to the rezoning application that will allow developers to build their luxury monstrosity on Riverside.

The City of Austin does its best to appear as if it is against gentrification. It adopts phony Strategic Housing Blueprints and starts do-nothing Anti-Displacement Task Forces to direct attention away from its clear collaboration with parasitic developers. But the city is not controlled by developers, nor is it an ignorant accomplice in gentrification. It can only be described as an active partner in the hostile removal of working people from Austin.

We know that Nimes Capital, Presidium Group and their gang want to flip Ballpark & Town Lake into a new Domain to make money, and we know that the people of Riverside want to protect themselves from this vicious upheaval. What does the city want?

Since 2006 with the East River­side/Oltorf Combined Neighborhood Plan, the city has had its eyes on southeast Austin for rampant development. This plan proposed to densify Riverside and Oltorf by rewarding developers with incentives if they flipped properties in the area. Planners promised that by encouraging an abundance of new housing construction, there would be more affordable homes for all.

As the plan went into effect, it became clear that the redevelopment was not intended for working-class Austinites and students already in the area, but exclusively for the rich. Apartment complexes that housed working people were ripped down to be replaced by luxury condos, with the most notable example being the assault on Shoreline apartments in 2009. In that rezoning case, the city gave the developers permission to build beyond the constraints of city code in exchange for the developers agreeing to pay relocation assistance to the nearly 200 working class households living there. When the developers failed to uphold their end of the bargain as tenants were forced to leave with nothing, the city stood by and did nothing. Gentrification in the ‘41 has steadily escalated since then, especially with the arrival of the tech software giant, Oracle, to the area.

The truth is that the city has no reason to resist developer schemes and every reason to cooperate with them. Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. and the city government wants to keep it that way, even at the expense of the working people who live here. A wealthier, larger tax base means more funding for city departments, increased salaries, and beefier resumes. We see no excuse to spare city staff from the righteous anger of a community they could give the green light to destroy.

And that’s why Defend Our Hoodz, along with Riverside tenants, went directly to city staff today to demand answers and make sure they know the consequences of their rubber stamping. They can’t hide behind the bureaucracy when they make decisions that reshape entire neighborhoods.

While some of us showed up right at their offices, we are calling on Ballpark & Town Lake Tenants, Riverside residents, and all of our supporters to waste no time before the commission hearings and to protest the city’s review of Ballpark’s rezoning application now! Scott Grantham, the case manager in the Planning and Zoning Department, is overseeing the review, and can be reached at:

[email protected]

By phone at 512-974-3574

Let him know that we are demanding staff recommend denial for the case and that we won’t give them any peace until they do. We see them for the collaborators they are and we won’t stand by as they push through a rezoning application that endangers our hood!

Defend Ballpark! Defend Riverside!