Mueller Master Planned Community

Located East Austin

Mueller, a family name actually pronounced ‘Miller, is the home of a 20-year master planned community.  What makes Mueller so unique, is that is setting a standard in LEED and green building while the nation watches.

From the very start, even pre-construction was considered ‘green’, because it was being developed on an Austin’s original airport tract, so no clear cutting was needed to build.  The community is even re-using the old airport hangers, one is now a working film studio.

Below is are some articles I’ve saved over the years on Mueller.  Enjoy…..

Nation follows Austin’s LEED

By Mary Tuma Friday, 15 January 2010

Resting on the 700-acre site of Austin’s former airport, the Mueller development has won praise for its energy-efficient practices, from the use of recycled materials to solar power generation. In November, the mixed-use project became Texas’ first residential community to gain LEED Silver certification under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Neighborhood Development pilot program.

Mueller already had two commercial buildings with LEED Platinum certification, two with Gold and two with Silver.

Click for larger image

“This is one of the projects that is shaping the LEED-Neighborhood rating to be used nationwide,” said Liana Kallivoka, LEED faculty member and head of Austin Energy’s commercial Green Building Program.

Yet, even while planes were still taking off and landing at the Mueller Airport, which closed in May 1999, the City of Austin was implementing green building policies that would be forerunners for the national LEED ratings.

Last week the Department of Energy announced that the Pecan Street Project has been awarded $10.4 million, under the department’s regional smart grid demonstration program, to fund an advanced smart grid project at the Mueller development in central Austin.

The demonstration project will integrate with Austin Energy’s next generation smart grid platform to create, operate and evaluate an open platform Energy Internet – a type of smart grid that allows two-way electricity and information flow and is modeled on the architecture of the Internet. The proposal was submitted by a partnership of Central Texas energy experts, including Austin Energy, The University of Texas, Environmental Defense Fund, the Austin Chamber of Commerce and the City of Austin.

“What better place for innovation than in this innovative community,” said U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett. ”We gather in this vibrant new neighborhood – the site of Austin’s old airport – where airplanes once landed and took off. Now we have landed these federal funds to help our community takeoff on its energy future. We are taking old ways of using energy and creating a new, more efficient way forward. These federal dollars will focus on how we store renewable energy with a smart grid.”