Prepare for landing ... at Austin's new great urban destination

Upper Airport Boulevard — from Mueller to Midtown Commons — is changing. With rail service, revitalizing neighborhoods, popular local businesses, and a new future for Highland Mall, this emerging uptown district is becoming a model for how to turn aging highway strips into attractive, sustainable places.

The City of Austin is working with Airport Boulevard owners, users, neighbors and other stakeholders to create the vision, rules and tools to create Austin’s next great urban district. You can learn more and take part in this process right here at airportboulevard.com.

Do you want to get involved? Please sign up for our Airport Boulevard contact list here. We’ll make sure you’re up to speed on upcoming activities and events.

What and Where

Upper Airport Boulevard extends from the Mueller community — Austin’s old airport, hence the name — just east of I-35, to the road’s northern end at Lamar Boulevard. Highland Mall, formerly Austin’s largest regional shopping center, is the midpoint of the corridor.

Ever since it was built, Airport Boulevard has been a better place for cars than for people. It’s been a boundary and barrier that separates the (nine) nearby neighborhoods rather than bringing them together. As Austin has grown and changed, the Airport Boulevard corridor hasn’t kept up; it’s an obsolete suburban highway strip in the heart of a vibrant city.

But now the corridor is in transition. With two stations along Capital Metro’s Red Line, new development at Mueller and Midtown Commons, major investments by Travis County and ACC, and the reinvention of Highland Mall, now is the time to start transforming this aging corridor into Austin’s next great urban destination.

Right now, the City of Austin has brought Airport Boulevard’s owners, users, neighbors and other stakeholders together to craft the vision, rules and tools that can jump-start and guide that transformation. It’s setting the stage for the partnerships between public entities and with the private sector that will bring reinvestment and a new, bright future to the Upper Airport Boulevard corridor.