Energy-efficient systems. Recycled materials and non-toxic finishes. Natural light and ventilation. Low-water-use fixtures and xeriscaping. These hallmarks of green building have become common features in new development of all kinds. They’re certainly common in Austin, Texas, widely recognized as one of the country’s capitals of green building.

So it’s no surprise that in the largest real estate project in Austin history — the redevelopment of the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport — you’ll find many best practices of green building, included in every single home, office, storefront, and civic building in the community. Catellus Development Group, the master developer of Mueller, is partnering with the City of Austin and its utilities, informed and engaged citizens, as well as local designers and builders to make this new mixed-use urban village a showpiece of ‘green urbanism.’

This commitment to sustainability has been a hallmark of Mueller since the earliest days of the project. Austin citizens first began seeking to relocate the then-booming airport and crafting a redevelopment vision for the site, which is only three miles from downtown, in the 1980s. Their goal was to create a new development model for Austin that would provide an alternative to the ongoing suburban sprawl that — in the view of many Austinites, then and now — was putting the Texas capital’s unique natural environment and cultural character at risk. Years later, when Mueller was slated for closure, this vision was reflected in the project’s guiding principles, and then in its award-winning master plan and design book (produced by ROMA Design Group) adopted in 2001.

The master plan state that “[The Mueller] development should be planned in a way that promotes energy and water efficiency, resource protection, reduced auto dependency, watershed protection and green space preservation.The Mueller community offers a spectrum of unique opportunities to successfully apply Green Building and New Urbanism strategies simultaneously. This combination of strategies can be described as ‘green urbanism’ — the coordinated merging of environmental protection, economic prosperity, community cohesion and aesthetic beauty, sustainable over many generations and valued as a focal point of the larger city.”

As the plan is implemented, thus far, the project has been able to meet and exceed the goals established at the outset. Mueller’s community design, vertical construction, and infrastructure are all being developed with the focus on sustainability required to make Mueller the new development model it was envisioned to be.

All buildings at Mueller have to earn at least a two-star rating (or for single-family homes a three-star rating) in Austin Energy’s Green Building Program, one of the nation’s pioneering programs and a key influence on the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED programs. (A two-star rating is comparable to a national LEED certification; Mueller’s design guidelines incorporate LEED criteria as well as the Green Building Program standards.) Many of Mueller’s buildings as constructed are in fact exceeding these Green Building Program requirements.

Mueller’s 711 acres will, on full buildout, be home to more than 4,600 housing units and nearly five million square feet of commercial space — a community with 10,000 jobs and 10,000 residents. These green building standards, in itself, make a huge impact on urban and regional sustainability. But Mueller, and Austin, are able and willing to go farther. Individual homebuyers are working with our homebuilders to upgrade to state-of-the-art green-building amenities, and one of our first homebuilders, Austin-based Streetman Homes, is producing a number of houses that earn a maximum five-star rating from the Austin Energy program. Fewer than 30 single-family homes in all of Austin — a city with approximately 300,000 housing units — qualify for this rating.

Meanwhile, commercial projects at Mueller have also exceeded the plan’s requirements and are eligible for premium levels of LEED certification. Indeed, Mueller’s first big employment anchor — the new Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas — is seeking LEED Platinum status. It would the first hospital in the U.S. to attain this benchmark.

Dell Children’s is one component of an emerging medical cluster that includes physicians’ offices, advanced research facilities of the University of Texas at Austin, and the administrative headquarters of Dell Children’s parent, the Seton Family of Hospitals, a unit of Ascension Health. Mueller and the City of Austin are currently exploring how this medical presence can work in synergy with the sustainable focus of the project to create a model “healthy community,” highlighting the public-health advantages, as well as the better known benefits, of sustainable development.

Now, these individual green-built projects would be less impressive and effective if they were set in a traditional development pattern that encouraged auto use, threatened surface and groundwater resources, or had other hallmarks of ill-designed “sprawl.” The green urbanism concept for Mueller tackles those issues head-on. In the words of the master plan, the Mueller vision “challenged the city to create a district that would be a model for responsible urban development — an alternative to land-consumptive and automobile-dependent patterns throughout the region that could influence the form and pattern of growth within Austin.”

Mueller’s urban-infill location, within minutes of the city’s major destinations — downtown, the State Capitol complex, and the main UT campus — does a great deal to realize these goals all by itself. The Mueller community vision builds on these advantages by incorporating bus and future rail transit and encouraging walking and bicycling, with dedicated walkways and bike paths along every street and trails throughout the development.

Much of the new street infrastructure includes recycled material from the former airport runways. As for utility infrastructure, Mueller is served by the Austin Water Utility’s initial reclaimed-water system, allowing the use of recycled “greywater” for irrigation and other non-potable uses. And Austin Energy has constructed an innovative, self-contained energy-efficient mini-plant to provide power, heating, and cooling to the Dell Children’s campus. As well, Mueller features solar installations both on individual homes and on commercial and civic structures such as the new Ronald McDonald House that serves the hospital — the first facility in that national network to incorporate solar as part of initial construction.

More than 20 percent of the Mueller site is being developed as public parks and green space, with the planting of 15,000 trees, including many mature specimens preserved from both on site and other development sites in the area. This open space — adding to what is already one of America’s most extensive municipal park systems — also provides major water-quality benefits, reducing off-site flooding and naturally filtering non-point source pollutants from stormwater runoff. Even though on full build-out, Mueller will include significantly more impervious cover than did the former airport, these features will lead to improved water quality and less damaging runoff when compared to historical levels.

Mueller parkland also features low-water-use native plantscapes designed in partnership with the Austin-based Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. These re-established segments of the Blackland Prairie ecosystem that predated urban development in the eastern part of Austin are being installed to educate residents and visitors not only about local ecology but about how they can make their own gardens, lawns, and landscapes more sustainable and sensitive.

Throughout the project, the Mueller design standards call for landscaping and plant material to be deployed in ways that limit resource use, require little maintenance or toxic chemical use, reduce light pollution, and “function as the community’s lungs to filter the air and lower ambient temperatures,” in the words of the master plan. For example, the Mueller design standards require “orchard parking,” with one tree for every four parking spaces in surface parking lots (such as in the community’s retail centers), which will diminish urban heat island effects as well as make these spaces more walkable. 

Even the public art at Mueller conveys the environmental message. At the main gateway to Mueller’s retail center along I-35, a series of 16-foot-tall “SunFlowers,” sculptures constructed as solar collectors, will produce their own energy as well as provide shade to pedestrians and bicyclists on the greenway below. 

“We wanted to create a piece of artwork that would generate interest and value for the neighborhood,” said artist Lajos Héder, who with Mags Harries is creating the sculptures, which constitute the largest public art project in Austin to date. “And sculptures that generate solar energy embody the goals and principles that Austin and Mueller stand for.”

The people of Austin, and the builders serving them, have shown they are willing to work to implement those goals and principles. They are constant partners in making Mueller a living sourcebook of good ideas and proven best practices for sustainability. What is happening at Mueller should inspire other builders seeking to make any new project — from a single home to an entire new town — more sustainable and more successful. SLDT