Brush Square @ Cap Metro Station Update: 10/28/08

Work continues to progress along 4th St, as well as portions of Trinity St for improvements to the south side of Brush Square. Sidewalks are being poured and finished, eight of the ten new Oak trees have been planted and crews are working to finish out the remaining sidewalks near the Hilton and installing street lights, a welcome addition to the park. Check out the photos for progress through Tue, 10/28.

View West along 4th St, trees and sidewalks being installed

Looking east along 4th from Trinity St.

Palm Park – Thanks Texas Gas Service!

Beginning back in April, Texas Gas Service (TGS) crews labored to remove an old, hazardous tennis court along with fencing at Palm Park, located at 3rd Sts and SB frontage of I-35 in downtown Austin.  They spread some soil we had delivered but it needed some more fill.

Thanks to 10 truckloads of soil from the foundation’s Auction Oaks @ Republic Square project, as well as another 10 truckloads of mulch from Carl Brockman of Natural Texas, we’ve filled in the area.  TGS personnel returned last week to spread everything and now we’re ready to sow some wildflowers, which we’ll do in the coming weeks.  Thanks to James and his crews, as well as Larry and Lori from Texas Gas Service in Austin!

Brush Square – 4th St Work Continues

I must admit that I’m a little surprised at how much the contruction of the new curbs, “great streets” sidewalk and tree area is taking out a chunk of Brush Square along 4th St. Cap Metro’s contractor assures us that everything will look better and we’ll end up with a better park.

Unfortunately, due to a host of irrigation issues that occurred prior to the start of construction, it looks like we’ve lost most of the trees (yaupons) along the south side of the park that we planted about one year ago. We’ll be removing these soon and replacing them at some point after all of the dust has settled.

Volunteer Nov 1 to Clean-Up Barton Creek Greenbelt!

GreenNotes Concert and Cleanup, November 1

Join CLIF Bar, Austin Parks Foundation, Sierra Club, Keep Austin Beautiful, REI and Austin-based musician Ben Kweller for a Barton Creek Greenbelt cleanup and concert event from 10 am to 3 pm beginning at Zilker Park Polo Fields

Clif Bar will provide the food to keep the energy up, and Ben Kweller will provide the tunes to keep you gettin’ down! Please register here.

Shoal Creek and Pease a Little Less Invasive

Between Friday Oct 17 and Sat Oct 18, we had over 60 volunteers come out and help us cut down and peel back a lot of chinaberry trees as well as numerous vines, weeds and other items along a stretch of the Shoal Creek Greenbelt and Pease Park, from roughly Kingsbury St where the hike and bike bridge crosses the creek on the southern end of Pease Park down to the Lamar St Bridge underpass.  Thanks to Volunteers from the neighborhood, Dell, Crockett High School and UT for their help which involved a lot of hauling and dragging the cut logs, trees and mass o vines to the pick up spot on Kingsbury.  The city’s solid waste crews picked up two 18-wheeler truckloads on Friday afternoon and another truckload on Monday.  Not bad!  Here’s a picture of me in front of the Friday pile (2 18-wheeled truck loads worth)  All of the brush will become Dillo Dirt!

Lots of Ways to Volunteer in the next few weeks…

We have quite a few volunteer events coming in the next 30 days and we definitely need volunteers and especially, volunteer leaders for our big events on Nov 1 at Barton Creek Greenbelt and Nov 8 at Country Club Creek Trail @ Guerrero-Colorado River Park.

Details and Sign-ups are on our volunteer page.

Oct 18: 9 am to noon – Shoal Creek Greenbelt @ Pease Park – Invasive tree and brush removal on trail between Kingsbury and Duncan Park.  Meet at Pease at Kingsbury.

Oct 25: Big Tree Planting at Bartholomew Park

Nov 1: Barton Creek Clean-up sponsored ClifBar GreenNotes.10 am to 2 pm with free concert for all volunteers.  We need 30 or more volunteer leaders who know Barton Creek Greenbelt Trails.

Nov 8: Project Build A Park with Austin Community College. 9 am to noon and noon to 3 pm.  We need 30 or more volunteer leaders who have experience in trail building, invasive species and heavy debris removal.

2nd Austin Oyster Adventure Race: Great Fun

The Austin Parks Foundation was the beneficiary for a seond year of the Austin Oyster Adventure Race.  Team Sage/Team Player Productions of Denver, CO is running a series of six Oyster races in Denver, San Francisco, Nashville, Seattle, Austin and Portland, OR this year and the foundation helped lay out the course, recruit the 50 plus volunteers needed to run the race and help out with set-up, running the race and clean-up.

Nearly 40 teams of 3-6 people each started and finished at RunTex at S. Riverside and S. South.  Eight stages or Passports awaited them and the next passport was only revealed when they completed the previous passport.  Teams were told to bring bikes, running shoes, rollerblades or scooters and expect to get wet and that’s it.  The eight passports were:

1) Bike to Walsh Boat Landing on Lake Austin.  Teams had to throw a cowbell across 25 feet of water with two successful catches, otherwise, one member had to swim out 25 feet to a kayak to get the next passport, which was…

2) Bike to Lion’s Golf Course. One team member had to hit a ball at the driving range beween two banners about 30 feet out.  They had up to 20 chances.  They then returned to RunTex.

3) Teams ran from RunTex to Seaholm Power Plant where they had to locate the next passport which was…

4) AMLI on 1st.  They had to climb 19 stories of stairs, get their passport punched and head back down (that’s 325 stairs up, 325 stairs down.) They returned to RunTex after this.

5) Teams headed out on bikes to Bus Fruh Access Trail on Barton Creek Greenbelt.  They  left their bikes at the top and ran down to the Gus Fruh Wall, where one member had to climb up ropes and ring a cowbell.  Then back to their bikes and back to RunTex.

6) From RunTex, teams rolled (rollerblades or scooters) to Pease Park near MLK where two members had to play two of the disc golf course holes and roll back to RunTex.

7) Teams left on bikes from RunTex and rode to the Rowing Dock on the south side of Lake Lady Bird, just beyond Mopac.  Two members jumped into a kayak and paddled to Lou Neff Point in Zilker Park, while the other one ran over to Lou Neff.  When they met at Lou Neff, the runner jumped into the kayak and one of the kayakers jumped out and they all met back at the Rowing Dock.  They then rode back to RunTex.

8) Teams ran over to PureAustin Fitness to complete a short obstacle course, then over to Whole Foods where a team member did an oyster shot, a BBQ sauce shot and a gross “natural” smoothie shot.  With that, they headed back to RunTex for post race Beer, BBQ and Prizes.

Thanks to Chris L. for the great photos posted here and our on Flickr account as well our 50 plus volunteers who manned all of our passport checkpoints and start/finish line.  And thanks to Team Sage/Team Player Productions for working with us again this year.  Please join us next year sometime in October.  Further info on the Oyster Racing Series.

austinparks.org web site back up…

We had some problems with our email server and website earlier today, but thanks to our ISP, the issues are resolved. Thanks for your patience…

– Austin Parks Foundation staff.

MetroRail Station Comes to Brush Square

Big changes are afoot on the southern side (along fourth street) of Brush Square (home to the O Henry Museum, the Suzanna Dickinson House and the central fire station). In addition to the restoration on the Dickinson House, work crews are installing a new broad sidewalk and 12 new street trees along the south side of the park along fourth street. This is part of the improvements that are being added for the Cap MetroRail station in that same block. Here’s a few photos of the work underway.

Red Bud Isle Visitors Lift Their Limbs…

Over the past two weeks, volunteers lead by Nadene Morning as well as American Youthworks E-Corps have been removing more invasive (non-native) trees on Red Bud Isle.  As a result, over 95 percent of the invasives have now been removed, but the amount of brush piled up along the trails was huge.  Thanks to a few signs encouraging park users to carry a branch or trunk back to the parking lot, all brush – save five pickup truck loads – was hauled back into the big pile shown here.  The Parks Forestry Crews will pick the piles up shortly for transformation into mulch.  Thanks to all Red Bud Isle visitors who lifted the (their limbs) and branches and trunks….