Social equity key facet of University Hills
Families with young children are returning to what was once a family-friendly spot.
Along winding Little Walnut Creek, hidden from most of the city, is a little park with a pool. Located on Loyola Lane in Northeast Austin, it was built in 1966 as a private retreat for homeowners who had just purchased houses in the recently developed subdivision of University Hills.
Twice, University Hills almost lost this park altogether.
In 1972, Austin developer Walter Carrington closed the private club and applied to build a 40-unit condo project on the spot. Dozens of residents fifiled a lawsuit, claiming that Carrington’s sales team had promised access when they bought their homes. They won.
The city of Austin purchased the land for recreational purposes in 1974. It was named after longtime music teacher Dottie Jordan, who lived across the street from the park and had been an eloquent advocate for its salvation. She had died in 1973.
Again, in 2012, the easily flflooded site was threatened
with closure, this time by the city. Again, the neighborhood fought back and won.
During the Memorial Day floods earlier this year, water and debris from Little Walnut Creek reached well into park. By the time this reporter visited Dottie Jordan Recreation Center this summer, however, the recreational areas looked good. The creek bed, on the other hand, had been pummeled.
The park is the heart and, some would argue, the soul of University Hills. The district — located primarily between U.S. 290 and Manor Road, U.S. 183 and Northeast Drive, with a long finger following Loyola Lane southeast — doesn’t get the attention of its near-twin, Windsor Park, which is now closely associated in the public imagination with the nearby Mueller Development.
From the beginning, University Hills attracted a more diverse population than did Windsor Park, which originally included some restrictive covenants pertaining to race.
Every street, set among fairly steep hills crested with mostly low-lying ranch homes, is named after a university, though not the University of Tex- as or Texas A&M. Sometime-historian Lori Doran, who fell in love with the quiet midcentury oasis years ago, was once told that was to avoid feuding.
University Hills is located on former farm and ranch land that seemed remote from the central city until the late 1950s, when the Interregional Highway — later known at Interstate 35 — made commuting to and from Austin’s formerly agricultural fringes more feasible.
At one time, the neighborhood’s northern sectors were part of the huge St. John Regular Baptist Association legacy land that had housed an African-American orphanage, a school and sites for annual encampments.
Other parts were part of a ranch owned by Vernon and Betty Cook. A few streets retain names from that era. The Cook’s house, also known as Case Mill Homestead, became the headquarters for the American Botanical Council, which promotes the use of herbs and medicinal plants. The nonprofit also maintains bounteous educational gardens.
The area was annexed by the city between 1960 and 1963, while the Bluffs of University Hills, the crooked finger that reaches across Manor Road, was annexed in 1968 and 1971.
According to an undat- ed copy of an area study produced by Holford & Carson Development Consultants — most likely in the late 1970s — urbanization of the neighborhood started in the western sector and then moved eastward.
“Home construction in the area reached its peak in the period of 1970-71,” the report reads, “when more than 300 single-family homes were built. During 1972 and 1973, the number dropped to 97, and in the years since then, a total of less than 30 homes have been constructed.”
During this time, IBM moved some of its operations into the northern reaches of Austin — part of our first tech boom. A pack of rental units were built between 1970 and 1976, according to the study.
Why, then, did growth stop so abruptly around the mid-1970s?
“The social factor that had such a major effect on the area was the large immigration of blacks,” the study says, “creating fears that the neigh- borhood would become entirely black.”
This phenomenon, otherwise known as “white flight,” was repeated in other close-in Austin neighborhoods after the passage of national and local housing fairness acts and ordinances in the late 1960s.
Another disruption: Successfully, if bumpily, integrated Reagan High School, built in 1965 just north of U.S. 290 — a source of academic and athletic pride — was joined by LBJ High, just three miles down the highway in 1974.
Area neighbors felt the new school diluted the multiple achievements of Reagan; others felt it was a deliberate move to undercut Reagan’s statewide sports triumphs.
At times during the past, the fabric of University Hills has frayed at the edges. Yet some streets have retained their modest, midcentury character. And now families with young children are returning to what was once a very family-friendly spot.
It helps that the area schools — including Bertha Sadler Means Young Women’s Leadership Academy — are on the upswing. And that the little park remains.
Turns out, too, that, despite the disruptions, whites and blacks stayed in significant numbers, now joined by other ethnic groups.
“At a time when red-lining was an accepted concept in real estate development in Austin, University Hills was an example of ethnic equity,” reads the neighborhood association’s online history. “To this day, current demographics indicate the continuation of that equity, one of the attributes contributing to University Hills’ image as a good place for all citizens to lay down roots, raise a family, form friendships and provide mutual support.”