Jessy Beauchamp, 29, walks Friday to a friend's apartment at the Quad apartment complex, which could be bulldozed along with other housing in that area off East Riverside Drive if the Austin City Council votes to rezone the area. Beauchamp says the low rent gave him the ability to go to college and work at the same time, but over the eight years he has lived there, he's seen the area slowly gentrify. [ELI IMADALI/AMERICAN-STATESMAN] ▲ The Quad apartment complex on East Riverside Drive is on some of the five tracts of land that could be rezoned by the Austin City Council in a vote next week to allow for a large mixed-use development. [ELI IMADALI/AMERICAN-STATESMAN] ▲ The Quad, front, and The Ballpark North apartment complexes off East Riverside Drive stand on land where developers want to build a large mixed-use complex. [ELI IMADALI/AMERICAN-STATESMAN] ▲ Developers seek to rezone 97 acres along East Riverside to make way for a large mixed-use development. ▲

Dozens of mattresses and trash bags line the apartment buildings at the East Riverside apartment complex Ballpark North.

Staff call this time of year "the turn." It's when the fully furnished apartments marketed to college students are cleaned out and prepped for a flood of new tenants to arrive just before the beginning of the school year.

This type of housing is uncommon outside of the UT campus area. Leases are offered by room, often matching up strangers with one another for a year of study. For Austin, it is one of the cheaper options for student housing.

But on Thursday, Austin's City Council might pave the way for the redevelopment of Ballpark North and four adjacent student apartment complexes at the northeast corner of Riverside Drive and Pleasant Valley Road.

A pair of developers want to raze the 1,300 housing units there and transform the 97 acres into a massive mixed-use development: 4,700 new housing units, 4 million square feet of office space and 600 hotel rooms in buildings that could be as tall as 15 stories.

Developers Presidium Group and Nimes Real Estate are calling the project 4700 Riverside, a rebrand of its previous iteration as Project Catalyst. But to many of the vociferous detractors of the project, it is known pejoratively as the "Domain on Riverside."

The large development will come before the City Council on Thursday as a zoning case seeking to remove housing capacity caps on the property. The Planning Commission recommended allowing the project to move forward in June.

In recent years, East Riverside Drive has seen rapid redevelopment. Along with Oracle Corp.'s nearby large new office campus on South Lakeshore Boulevard, hundreds of upscale new apartment units and other development have changed the area, spurring protests over the ongoing gentrification.

Most notable is the group of activists known as Defend Our Hoodz, which stages often boisterous protests against projects it considers symptoms of gentrification. At the Planning Commission meeting, several members of the group were tossed from the City Council Chambers where the meeting took place as they often interrupted with chants, banged on windows and shouted obscenities.

"It is a ruling class attack on the working class," Defend Our Hoodz said in a statement. "It is going to destroy 1,300 low-cost units in one of the last central areas in Austin where working class people can live."

The project's lobbyist, Michael Whellan, called their disruptions of meetings and protests near the site "performance politics." Whellan said he attempted to reach out to the group, but never was able to build a dialogue.

"I don't see a desire to engage in an open process," Whellan said. "We've had community meetings, meetings with the contact team and meetings with other opponents. They stated they do not want to engage in that manner."

The developers have promised to make between 400 and 565 of housing units they build affordable housing with rents budget-friendly to families making no more than 60% of Austin's median income. They are touting that portion of the project as the largest affordable housing by a private developer ever in Austin's urban core.

Whellan said they have spoken with several stakeholders. And while the 20-year old apartments would be redeveloped over one to two decades into a much larger development, the developers estimate that nine acres of impervious cover would be reclaimed.

Fourteen acres of the site would become dedicated parkland, according to a presentation from the developers. They also would construct a grid of streets that would extend Lake Shore Boulevard and have it intersect Wickersham Lane.

Council Member Sabino "Pio" Renteria, who represents much of East Riverside Drive, including the apartment complexes that would be demolished, said he supports the project.

"When we don't allow or provide any incentive to provide affordable units, they won't (build them)," Renteria told the Statesman on Friday. "They will just all become high-end units. We are seeing that done now."

Construction would begin in about two years if the City Council removes building restrictions Thursday, Whellan said. The project will take between 10 and 20 years to complete.

Residents in place when demolitions begin would be offered a compensation package and first crack at new apartments built in place of where they lived. The package includes $500 in moving expenses, full refund of deposits, up to $1,200 toward the tenant's new lease and $500 toward a new lease if they decide to return to the redeveloped complex, according to a document outlining the package.

Fred McGhee, a Montopolis neighborhood resident and critic of Austin's housing policies, said the 4700 Riverside project is another in a line of projects that show the City Council prioritizes building luxury housing over preserving affordable housing. "The fix is in," he said.

"The council has institutionalized the practice of steroidal development," McGhee said. "That changes the rent. It changes the land value. This is what developers are seeking to capture."