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Tex-Mex and RunTex consider Sunset Valley’s historic farm for new location

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Written by Christi Covington Friday, 25 July 2008

Some Austin-based businesses may soon fill the stone barn and home on the old Weaver farm in Sunset Valley.

Bill Walters, the developer behind the Sunset Valley master plan at Brodie Lane and Hwy. 290, announced at the community’s July 22 city council meeting that RunTex, owned by Paul Carrozza, is a likely match for the house. Home on the old Weaver Farm in Sunset Valley

Serious negotiations are also in progress for the owner of Trudy’s and South Congress Café to fill the barn with a restaurant, although nothing is finalized. Walters gave the announcement while requesting a variance for impervious cover. Impervious cover is anything that blocks water from entering the ground. (For further information on this, read our Water Story from the June issue.)

To provide 49 parking spaces for the barn, Walters said he needed the city to allow him 18,690 sq. ft. of new impervious cover. The city requires one parking space for every three seats in a restaurant. He added that enough existing parking is available for RunTex customers next to the Verizon store.

Cindy Kohler, a project manager with Walters Southwest, plans to return to the council in August for additional discussion and possible approval to the variance request. At this point, she is optimistic that an agreement will be reached. Barn on old Weaver Farm in Sunset Valley

“The barn is important to the city,” she said. “It is important to everyone that lives in the area. We want to keep the history of it and we wanted to have someone local in it.” Portions of the 2,500 sq. ft. house were built in the late 1890s. The Brodie family sold the farm to the Weavers in 1945, who stayed in the home until recent years. They had built the stone barn in the early 1960s.

Kohler said the house was attractive to RunTex, the well-known running store, because of its proximity to the Tony Burger Activity Center and the surrounding trail system, as well as its unique location within a major development.

“It’s a little oasis in the middle of all this commercial square feet,” she said.

She said the restaurant would probably be a hybrid of Trudy’s Tex-Mex menu and South Congress Café’s more upscale dining. At the council meeting, it was estimated the renovation project would cost around $2 million.