At street level, Eureka’s acquisition of the lot at East 12th and Navasota is just one transaction in an out-of-town company’s extraordinary buying spree in East Austin. In recent years Eureka has purchased 114 parcels along and around the corridor, according to county records. They range from small vacant lots and older residences to a historic site and the Mount Carmel Village Apartments, a 50-year-old affordable housing complex.

Eureka’s central East Austin portfolio exceeds $50 million, public records show. That doesn’t make it Austin’s largest or wealthiest real estate company; the developers of downtown’s “Jenga” skyscraper are spending an estimated $300 million on a single building.

But by accumulating so many properties in the East 12th Street corridor, once the heart of the city’s historic African-American community, the Dallas company has in effect become the largest shareholder of one of Austin’s most iconic and culturally sensitive neighborhoods.

Eureka’s managing partner, Rene Campos, said he is committed to creating the community locals want and need.

“We’re long term, so we don’t have the short-term immediate pressures some other organizations might have,” he said. “We want to do quality developments that fit in with the neighborhood.”

The company has so far revealed little about its intentions, though, telling KUT last year there was “no specific plan at this time” for the 12th Street portfolio. In a city that has seen its African-American share of the population shrink in recent years, Eureka’s leverage has created deep anxiety among locals.

“It feels like they have an agenda that is not necessarily the agenda of people who live there,” said Council Member Ora Houston, whose district includes the 12th Street corridor. “They can do whatever they want to that community.”

Houston said she walked out of an early meeting with company officials when it appeared they had no intention of working with her. It felt the way “indigenous people must have felt when nonindigenous people invaded their land,” she said. “It feels like colonization.”

Others worry that Eureka’s aggressive acquisitions are altering the neighborhood’s character, accelerating gentrification in an area ill-equipped to resist it.

Rene Campos is the managing partner at Eureka Holdings. (RESHMA KIRPALANI / AMERICAN-STATESMAN)

“When people are offering as much as they were to us, it changes who stays and who goes,” Patrick Houck, a 12th Street resident who said he declined three buyout offers from Eureka, told the City Council recently. “We were able to resist the offers, but some of our neighbors who are struggling are less positioned to remain in their homes.”

Underpinning the Dallas company’s move into the area are the city’s own missteps in East Austin. Eureka’s acquisition of a publicly owned parcel slated for other purposes is an apt metaphor for Austin’s uneven record over the years on simultaneously developing and preserving a uniquely important neighborhood — efforts local activists say have accomplished neither.

“Eureka has taken advantage of an opportunity created by unfulfilled commitments,” said Mike Clark-Madison, who served nine years on the city’s Urban Renewal Board before stepping down this year. “They seized the opportunity here and went on a land grab, which has scared the neighborhood to death.”