The Forest For the Trees

Austin's food forest says pipeline will disrupt free foraging

Festival Beach Food Forest is worried that land it has developed will be ruined by city construction.

Construction continues to ramp up on the I-35 Capital Express Central project through downtown and Central Austin, but with that construction comes challenges for nearby businesses and community organizations.

Among those raising concerns is Festival Beach Food Forest, which said the construction could affect its nearby green spaces.

The organization, located on city park land near Lady Bird Lake, has spent the past decade cultivating a public food forest where Austinites can forage for free produce. But now, organizers told KVUE that a temporary wastewater pipeline relocation tied to the highway expansion could destroy a portion of the site.

“We have peach trees. All of these guys will be full of fruit in the summer,” said Angie Holiday, the program manager for Fruitful Commons, the nonprofit that oversees the forest. “People just love to come here. It’s an oasis, honestly, in the middle of the city.”

However, that oasis may soon be disrupted. According to the organization, the pipeline trench would cut through a section of the forest that has been under active improvement since a city-approved expansion in 2021. Holiday said the team was only notified about the construction about a month before it was set to begin.

“It’s not just that we have over 90 trees and shrubs directly in the line of fire from this wastewater pipe, but we're also going to see the impacts of ripping out this ecosystem that we've spent the last year and a half creating that involves soil and irrigation lines,” said Angelina Alanis, communications coordinator for the Festival Beach Food Forest.

The nonprofit is now calling for an immediate pause on the project in the area while it works with the city of Austin and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to find a solution.

Read the full story at our news partner KVUE.com.

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Closing the Loop

Austin unveils finished 3-way traffic-free bridge over Lady Bird Lake

Photo courtesy City of Austin

Aerial view of the Pleasant Valley Road crossing at Lady Bird Lake, where the Wishbone Bridge and Unity Underpass improve trail connectivity and safety.

The Butler Trail’s long-awaited final link is here, and Austin is celebrating. The Trail Conservancy and the City of Austin will host a Wishbone Bridge & Unity Underpass ribbon-cutting celebration on Saturday, February 7, from 10 am to 12:30 pm at the Wishbone Bridge plaza near Longhorn Dam.

The event will include music, activities, and the opportunity to be among the first to experience the newly completed stretch of the trail.

With the opening of the Wishbone Bridge and Unity Underpass, Austin’s Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail becomes a continuous, traffic-free loop, closing the final major gap in the trail’s roughly 10-mile circuit around Lady Bird Lake. The roughly $25 million project represents the culmination of years of planning to fully connect one of the city’s most heavily used public spaces.

Wishbone Site Plan Site plan of the Wishbone Bridge and trail connections at Lady Bird Lake, illustrating the three-legged bridge alignment linking Longhorn Shores, Holly Shores, and the Butler Trail.Image courtesy of City of Austin

The Wishbone Bridge is a Y-shaped bicycle and pedestrian bridge spanning Lady Bird Lake, designed to connect three converging segments of the trail at a single junction. From the bridge’s central plaza, users can head east or west along the north shore or south toward the boardwalk and south shore, eliminating detours and roadway crossings that previously disrupted the loop.

The project also includes the Unity Underpass beneath South Pleasant Valley Road, a widened, grade-separated crossing designed to remove conflicts between trail users and vehicle traffic at one of the corridor’s choke points.

The Unity Underpass includes a large-scale mosaic by Houston-based public artist Reginald Adams, adding permanent public art to what was once a quick trail cut-through beneath the roadway. The bridge plaza above also includes new maraca-shaped art benches commissioned by The Trail Conservancy.

Wishbone Underpass Illustrative rendering of the Unity Underpass, part of the Wishbone Bridge project, showing the pedestrian and bike connection beneath Pleasant Valley Road.Rendering courtesy of City of Austin

Planning for the Wishbone Bridge began in 2018, when the City of Austin launched engineering and public engagement to address safety and connectivity issues near Pleasant Valley Road and Longhorn Dam.

Funding came primarily from Austin’s 2020 mobility bond, with additional federal Community Project Funding awarded in 2023 as project costs increased and the scope expanded. Construction began in July 2024. The project follows the completion of the Butler Trail Boardwalk in 2014, a roughly $28 million effort that closed a long-standing gap along the south shore of Lady Bird Lake. More than 2.6 million people use the trail each year, according to the city.

People attending the ribbon-cutting on Saturday will gather on the Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail near South Pleasant Valley Road. Parking will be available at Krieg Field, with multiple access points to the bridge, including south of Longhorn Dam, north of Longhorn Dam at the end of Canterbury Street, and north of the dam at the former Holly peninsula.

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