Affordable housing on horizon in Lakeway area

It’s no secret the Lake Travis area has an issue hiring and retaining employees for its many restaurants and businesses since local housing prices are out of reach for these workers and the region lacks public transportation.

With 180 apartment homes, Villages at Cardinal Hills aims to help solve this problem. Located on RM 620 just north of Storm Drive, the workforce housing project is slated to include 43 studio, 94 one-bedroom, 30 two-bedroom and 13 three-bedroom units when it opens in 2021, said Hudson Bend resident Meg Conine who is developing the project with her husband Kent Conine as owners of Conine Residential Group. The company is joined in the endeavor by several partners, including Sonoma Housing Advisors.

“There’s a tremendous pent-up demand (for workforce housing) in the area,” Kent Conine said, citing local workers who often live 30-40 minutes from their jobs. “You go to any restaurant or retail outlet in the Lakeway/Bee Cave area and there’s ‘help wanted’ signs all over the place.”

The workforce housing project was originally announced about a year ago when the land was put under contract and is set to break ground on the approximately 4.5-acre tract in the first quarter of 2020, with about an 18 month construction period planned, Meg Conine said.

The rental prices are subject to change because, as a tax credit property, these prices are based on the median income of the community at the time the property will be occupied, Conine said. If the project opened with today’s area median income, monthly rental prices would start “in the $830 range,” with one-bedroom units costing $910, two-bedroom units costing $1,100 and three-bedroom units costing $1,250, she said.

“We will be catering to incomes from 30% of median to 80% of median, with an average of 60% (of median),” Conine said, adding the current median income in Travis County of $95,000-$96,000 annually. With those calculations, the project will appeal to residents earning $28,500-28,800 on the low end to $76,000-76,800 on the high end, and an average of $57,000-57,600.

According to Conine, the savings is substantial, with anticipated per-unit prices about $400 less than the area’s average rent for one-bedroom units, $700 less for two-bedroom units and $1,000 less for three-bedroom units.

Situated just outside of Lakeway’s city limits and in Austin’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, the project “will have everything that a Class A apartment community has” including a swimming pool, business center, clubhouse with a fitness center, dog park, playground and a walking trail in addition to other community services such as presentations on financial wellbeing, Conine said.

“Once we get the project occupied and see who lives there and what needs that the residents have, then (we’ll) decide the programs accordingly,” Kent Conine said.

The project is funded through a statewide low-income housing tax credit program, he said, with tax credits granted to the developer that can be sold to raise funds to build the community. Together with tax-exempt debt that can be placed on the property, the strategies will finance the Cardinal Hills project, he said.

The Conines must commit to being in compliance with program regulations for 30 years and submit to annual audits and inspections, Kent Conine said.

Although Meg Conine said a traffic impact analysis was not required, the project will reduce the through traffic in Lakeway and Lake Travis areas because the workforce the community aims to include won’t have to commute from outside of the region to their local jobs.

“So we’re actually thinking we’ll have a reduction of cars on the road based on our location,” she said. Average apartment communities have 1.5 cars per unit, Kent Conine said, resulting in about 270 cars for the complex.

Architecturally, the “family community” project will include four stories and feature a stone and stucco exterior, he said.

Conine Residential Group was founded in 1995 and constructs both market rate and workforce housing projects in Texas and outside of the state. Out of the eight workforce housing projects the company has built, the Cardinal Hills complex is its first project in the Austin area although Sonoma has developed numerous local projects, Kent Conine said.

Contrary to the market rate community recently voted down by Lakeway City Council, the Conine project rents are controlled by the median income in Travis County, he said.

The Lake Travis Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors fully supports the Village of Cardinal Hills workforce housing development, President Laura Mitchell said.

“This will be a welcomed development for our business community to help alleviate some of the pain points they have with staffing,” she said. “The staffing issue also includes the public sector such as the Lake Travis Independent School District and our first responders.”

The Conines said they’ve received a lot of interest in the new development, and the Cardinal Hills project may not be the last one in the area for the company.

“We’re having conversations with the leaders of Lakeway, Bee Cave and the surrounding areas to try to encourage them to support more projects like this,” Kent Conine said.