By Taylor Williams The Austin retail market is in dire need of more quality space, but between the newfound volatility in the U.S. capital markets and longstanding local policies that have hamstrung commercial developers in the state capital, delivering that space is no easy feat. The city’s remarkable growth story is well-documented. Big Tech has made Austin its home away from home, spearheading what was a 33 percent increase in population between 2010 and 2020, according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce. But the paces of growth of housing and infrastructure — two crucial prerequisites for retail development — haven’t kept up with the surging head count. In addition, the Austin bureaucracy is notorious for slow-moving entitlement and permitting processes, at least in the eyes of Texas developers who have done business in zone-free Houston or certain municipalities of Dallas-Fort Worth that make it a point to fast-track new projects. These issues at the local level have merged with debt market disruption on the national circuit, rendering a scenario in which the process of financing and building new retail space is fraught with headaches, delays and pitfalls. The number of ways in which new projects can be killed in action …
