July 6, 2020

City of Austin Planning Commission

301 W. 2nd St.
Austin, Texas 78701

Dear Members of the Planning Commission, Members of the Austin City Council and Co-Chairs of the
East Martin Luther King Contact Team:

This communication serves to clarify that the Letter of Support sent to the City of Austin Planning
Commission (carbon copying Austin City Council and the EMLK Contact Team) dated June 18, 2021 and
sent on behalf of the Franklin Grove HOA in support of Mr. Anmol Mehra’s proposed rezoning project
was drafted outside of the JJ Seabrook Neighborhood Association’s process and without community
input from neighbors beyond the Franklin Grove HOA.

The Franklin Grove is a 28 single family home PSW (now Storybuilt) development built in 2017. The JJ
Seabrook neighborhood association began in ~1984. It comprises ~400 properties stretching from
Airport Blvd. to Morris Williams Golf Course, MLK to Manor Blvd and including Anchor Lane/38 ½ Street.
The Franklin Grove development borders Mr. Mehra’s property. There Mr. Mehra has purchased trees for
each resident with a shared fence line, funded a mural honoring past and present local icons and
community activists, and invited neighbors to plant in a cluster of garden boxes on the site. While the
neighborhood acknowledges these efforts and can confirm the purchase of trees for Franklin Grove
residents, these incentives are distinct from the question at hand which is, will we, as a neighborhood,
support Mr. Mehra’s proposal to rezone two mid-block SF plots into two MF-4 LO-MU plots.

Current neighbor questions under discussion regard:

● Providing Parking
● Mitigating Traffic
● Preserving Greenspace
● Right-sizing Density to existing neighborhood gray infrastructure
● Restricting Height

Our neighborhood association has made a good faith effort to engage directly and regularly with Mr.
Mehra. He has presented at multiple association meetings and neighbors have emailed questions to his
team receiving some detailed responses. A few of the neighbors in the Franklin Grove have joined our
neighborhood meetings and voiced questions and support, participating in the engagement process up
to the last presentation from Mr. Mehra’s team. The Franklin Grove letter of support and the process
through which it has been drafted, circulated, and signed, however, took place outside these meetings
and without the awareness of the neighborhood association and its executive team. The JJ Seabrook
Neighborhood Association plans to continue with a transparent, democratic engagement process that
includes the neighborhood as a whole.

As a neighborhood association, we anticipate continued engagement and will proceed toward a decision
as a neighborhood to support, oppose, or forward an alternative proposal that meets the whole of the
neighborhood’s needs.
Our current plan is to use polls and a brief survey at and following our upcoming July 20 neighborhood
association meeting. With this data, we can draft an official neighborhood letter in response to Mr.
Mehra’s proposed zoning change for neighborhood vote at our August meeting.

Sincerely,

Elisabeth Johnson, JJSNA President Elizabeth Greenwood, JJSNA Secretary

Michael Brennan, JJSNA Vice President Dianna Dean, JJSNA Treasurer