In this week's issue:

  • Austin City Council just unlocked a pathway to 1,200-foot towers — taller than anything currently standing in Texas
  • An Austin Energy employee ran a fake vendor scheme for six years, pocketed nearly $1 million, and his supervisors signed off on every single invoice
  • Two major downtown hotels are hitting the Travis County foreclosure auction block on the same day
  • The San Antonio-to-Austin corridor now has 3,500 acres and 5+ gigawatts of compute infrastructure under development — and that number keeps climbing

Let's get into it.

Top Stories

Austin Just Unlocked the Tallest Towers in Texas

On May 29, the Austin City Council voted to pass the Downtown Density Bonus Phase 1 update — a zoning overhaul that creates two new combining districts and, for the first time, establishes a regulatory pathway to build towers taller than anything currently standing in Texas. Under DDB400, Central Business District parcels can now reach up to 750 feet above grade. Under DDB850, a developer who secures a separate rezoning and Council vote can build up to 1,200 feet — which would surpass the Waterline (98 Red River St., 74 stories, 1,025 feet), the current tallest building in Texas, which only topped out in August 2025. The base CBD zoning remains 350 feet by-right, meaning most downtown properties from 11th Street south were automatically rezoned into DDB400 as part of this vote. The shift from floor-area-ratio controls to pure height controls was not optional: Texas Senate Bill 840, passed in 2025, stripped cities of the ability to impose FAR limits on multifamily and mixed-use projects, forcing Austin to restructure the entire program around height bonuses instead. Developers opt in for extra height in exchange for on-site affordable units (5% at 50% MFI) or a fee-in-lieu ($10–$12 per bonus square foot). Marc Duchen was the lone "no" vote. Council Member Zohaib Quadri added an amendment to explore extending the program south of Lady Bird Lake.

The Council also passed, in the same session, authorization for third-party firms to conduct building plan reviews and inspections (File #26-1867), which takes direct aim at Austin's notoriously slow permitting pipeline. These two moves together — height unlocked, permitting accelerated — represent the most significant upgrade to Austin's building machine in years. The policy logic is clean: the state legislature did the heavy lifting by eliminating FAR, the city followed through with the height districts, and outsourced plan reviews remove one of the most persistent friction points developers have complained about for a decade. The implications for Austin's skyline are real, and the direction is unmistakable.

That said, developer reaction is pointedly skeptical. Bill Knauss of Pearlstone Partners and Kevin Burns of Urbanspace both said they don't see a meaningful difference from prior programs. The bottleneck isn't DDB400 — it's DDB850, and the problem with DDB850 is that it requires a separate rezoning and full Council vote before any shovel hits ground. That injects political uncertainty that lenders won't price favorably. The office market is still absorbing pandemic-era contraction. The residential high-rise pipeline has its own momentum independent of this policy. What the DDB update actually does is clear the legal framework and signal willingness — the 1,200-foot ceiling is real, the path is there — but whether any developer walks that path depends on market conditions, lender appetite, and whether this Council or future ones are willing to approve DDB850 rezoning requests without turning each vote into a political circus. Texas gave Austin the tool. Austin picked it up. Now someone has to build with it.

Sources: Austin Business Journal, The Real Deal Texas, Hoodline, City of Austin DDB Phase 1 Document, ABJ — Third-Party Review

Upcoming Events

  • Belle & Sebastian at ACL Live — Tonight, June 2 at ACL Live at The Moody Theater; Night Two of their two-night Austin run, doors at 7PM.
  • Waterloo Greenway Phase II: The Confluence Grand Opening. — Saturday June 6, 10AM–2PM at 1111 Red River St.; free admission with live music, art installations, park tours, and a ribbon-cutting for the newest stretch of Waller Creek greenway.
  • Blues on the Green — June 9–10 at Zilker Park; free outdoor concert series under the Austin sky, no ticket required.
  • Austin FC World Cup 2026 Viewing Party. — June 11–12 at Auditorium Shores; free with registration (capacity 5,000), featuring live screenings of four opening matches including USA vs. Paraguay on June 12 at 8PM CT.

An Austin Energy Employee Stole $980K Through 30 Fake Vendors — and His Bosses Signed Every Invoice

Between 2018 and 2023, Mark Ybarra, a facility service specialist at Austin Energy, used a city-issued Procard to route approximately $980,000 to at least 30 vendors — the vast majority of which did not exist. Only 8 of the 30 were registered city vendors. Services billed included debris removal, window cleaning, and painting, typically with little to no vendor detail attached. Roughly $400,000 flowed to a single address tied to a family member's home, where ten separate businesses were listed. Another $40,000 went to a vendor linked to Ybarra's personal email address. More than $80,000 went to a vendor whose listed address does not appear to exist anywhere. Ybarra was hired in July 2014 and resigned in October 2023 — only after management began asking for vendor details. He was indicted by a Travis County grand jury on first-degree felony theft (greater than $300K) on August 23, 2025, arrested by APD on September 15, 2025, and released on bond. His wife, Ambrosia Ybarra, a former Contract Management Specialist at the city's Watershed Protection Department, was indicted on September 15, 2025 on felony theft between $150,000 and $300,000. She refused to cooperate with auditors. The City Auditor released the formal report, titled "Austin Energy Fraud and Waste," on December 9, 2025. As of today, no money has been reported recovered.

Here is the part that should make you furious: this did not fail because of one bad employee working in the shadows. Facility services supervisor Sammy Ramirez approved approximately $750,000 in fraudulent payments across this scheme before retiring in June 2022 — apparently without once verifying that a single vendor existed or that any work was performed. After he left, Renee Codina, the interim building services manager, approved another $170,000 in fraudulent payments, some of which lacked vendor addresses entirely. Neither supervisor has been criminally charged. Neither has faced any publicly reported consequence. The system that was supposed to catch this — management review and approval of Procard transactions — was the system doing the rubber-stamping. Austin Energy's official response was that they were "deeply disheartened." Council Member Marc Duchen called for a citywide forensic audit, which is the right call and will almost certainly go nowhere fast.

This story is getting traction now because @austinreforms on X is driving the current discourse, connecting Ybarra's fake-vendor scam to the broader dysfunction flagged in the same City Auditor report — the same audit that separately documented $279M in consultant spending where 82% of sampled contracts lacked justification (which we covered May 24). Same audit, different rot. The city's billing oversight was so lax that a facilities employee could invent 30 fake companies, route a million dollars to his family's address over six years, and no one at Austin Energy thought to ask whether the vendors were real. The city updated its Procard procedures after the audit. Good. Now let's talk about the two supervisors who are walking free.

Sources: KVUE, KXAN, FOX 7 Austin, Austin Reforms on X

Weird Austin

One Thing

Austin is building towers that could touch 1,200 feet while simultaneously discovering that nobody was watching the invoices. Growth and accountability are two sides of the same city. This issue covered both.

  • Forward this to one person in Austin who needs to know what's actually going on
  • Reply with your take on the Austin Energy fraud — do the supervisors get charged or walk free?
  • Share on X if any of this was useful

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