Next Big Thing: West Campus cast in shadows
Written April 18, 2006. A news article on this same subject can be found here in The Daily Texan
I can’t wake up to my alarm clock anymore.
For five years, my Sony alarm clock served me well and woke me before every 8 a.m. class and exam–but no more. Ted at RadioShack assures me that the one I bought last week is the loudest one they sell–my housemates agree. Maybe I grew accustomed to the dependable beeping tone of my previous alarm clock. Maybe the alarm got quieter in its golden years. Maybe my former alarm clock simply sounds identical to the reversing construction equipment.
West Campus has turned into a block party for construction crews now that new zoning has allowed land owners to build high-rise apartments in the area. Developers pay more each day for land, and apartments go up faster than Starbucks locations.
It started with the Texan–a six-story mammoth of “luxury apartments” across the street that now blocks out the sun. A few months later, the Sterling complex showed up uninvited right next door to me. On that fateful day, I awoke to a cement breaker destroying what had been a parking lot next to us. Just to dispel any thought of efficiency about this cement breaker, it consists of a giant chisel-like column that a crane carries into the sky and drops onto the parking lot repeatedly to shatter it into pieces. From my second story bedroom, my entire world rattled each time it dropped. I expected my rent house, already passed its prime aesthetically and structurally, to collapse like a house of cards.
Along with construction came the beeping–construction crews must always drive their equipment in reverse.
At first, it tortured my housemates and me. We woke up and bickered about it as if the crews could hear us through our windows in the mornings and smothered our heads in pillows.
Several weeks later, the beeping, the banging and the sawing all became only background. We slept through it without tossing or turning. My previous alarm–may it rest in peace–lost its effectiveness and so did the beeps reminding us to change the batteries in our fire alarm.
Just as we had started to get used to the noise, the workers captured our backyard fence in the rubble. Without a fence, new sounds join the list of grievances. I went to the bathroom and heard voices outside–workers ducking under our external stairs to dodge the rain. The repetitive clang that woke me one Saturday–workers playing our horseshoes game in the backyard, or what used to be our backyard. When the construction workers finally put up a Rent-a-Fence, it cut our yard in half so that they could fit their gravel truck through.
I sometimes wake up at 9 a.m. to “La Cucaracha” on the horn of the taco dealer giving the construction workers their morning fix. She comes back at noon—so does the horn, and a gauntlet of workers sits on the railroad ties on both sides of our front walkway. When I leave for classes, I always want to run down the line and get high-fives like the announced starter for the Dallas Mavericks.
Even at night, the constant rustling of the paper attached to the siding they are putting up on Sterling eerily reminds us that out in the darkness, IT is waiting. Creepy. If only I could measure the decibel level to see if it warranted a noise complaint.
Now I realize that this construction is inevitable. Construction itself is not the problem, but the sheer amount of construction–on all sides of my current residence and many other locations throughout West Campus–makes it a disturbance to Austin’s “weird” community. With developers salivating to build apartments, land rates are skyrocketing and construction crews are matching the student population in West Campus. The Kappa Alpha Order’s second house sold for $4 million just so developers could tear it down. The location, far from the UT campus, is less valuable than most.
It is our own fault as West Campus residents. We encourage this rapid rush to build since every apartment that claims to be “the next big thing” with the best “luxury apartments” always fills up despite insane rent prices–that is, until the next one is built.
Almost three years ago, the talk of the apartment search community was the Villas on Guadalupe. Students signed pre-leases to live in the Villas almost a year in advance. Rent was higher than Snoop Dogg at about $1,000 a month per bedroom, and although some complained, they paid it.
The Texan put an end to that. With rent higher than the Villas, the Texan was full for this current school year before it even had walls while the Villas marketing team visited student organization meetings all last year searching for more tenants and dropped rent to somewhat sane numbers. The management was certainly probably caught off guard by how quickly the Villas aged in the life cycle of West Campus housing.
We all need to wise up. Whether the problem is the developers’ craze for new apartments or UT students’ desire to fill them, we will soon be competing to live in the highest ivory tower of West Campus. The residents, including myself, need to band together during this time of change and demand better treatment and lower rent prices. If none of us jump on the boat to live in the next mammoth dwelling, then the apartment companies will eventually have to come to their senses and drop pricing. On that same note, if we stop filling every apartment that goes up and providing an insane profit for the developers, maybe apartments won’t keep shooting up like weeds. Years from now, the greed of developers is sure to leave West Campus buried in a graveyard of old structures and faded dreams.
However, we have no neighborhood association. Every rogue element of West Campus has to fend for itself, and there is no stage for me to jump on, no soap box for me to occupy.
My advice: Ask for Ted and buy this new RadioShack alarm clock for $12.99. It’s going to be a loud next few years in West Campus, and unfortunately, all we can do is bunker down for the ride.
Related Posts:
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
You could also try using a timer, and plug in a lamp and/or television, etc… that way you could be sure to wake up even if your alarm clock doesn’t quite seem to do the trick for you any longer… I have used this myself, and it works great (for me)…