Civic Affairs · Austin, Texas
The Browning Hangar's Future
Is Being Decided Now
A city-owned space used every day by Austinites of all kinds is moving toward a new future through a process most residents don't know exists. Here is what is happening, and why it matters.
August 2026 · Updated September 30, 2026
On August 12, 2026, Banbury Development presented a design proposal for the Browning Hangar to the Historic Landmark Commission's Architectural Review Committee at Austin City Hall. The meeting was listed on the public agenda. It produced design feedback that will meaningfully shape the building's future. Most of the people who use the hangar regularly had no idea it was happening, and there was no process that required them to be informed.
That is not an accusation. The Architectural Review Committee is a standing body of three Historic Landmark Commission members who meet informally with applicants before a formal preservation vote, offering design guidance so that projects can move forward more smoothly. It is a normal part of Austin's preservation process, and it serves a legitimate function. Community notification is simply not part of how it works. The chess players, the line dancers, the frisbee throwers, the pétanque players, the buskers, the families eating food truck lunches in the shade, the yoga groups and pop-up musicians who all use that space regularly — none of them were notified, because the process does not require it.
The question worth asking is whether that should change, given what is at stake.
Sergio Negrete, Banbury's Principal and Senior Vice President of Development and a longtime participant in the Mueller redevelopment, opened his presentation with this statement:
“The Browning Hangar site was always contemplated to be monetized, privatized — the long-term stewardship and getting it out of the city of Austin’s hands.”
— Sergio Negrete, Banbury Development, August 12, 2026
He was referring to the Mueller Master Development Agreement, signed in 2004, which does contemplate the disposition of remaining parcels, including the hangar site. That agreement is a real document with real legal standing. It has also been amended a number of times, and in May 2024 City Council extended its term by about three years, to December 31, 2027, after delays caused by the financial crisis and the pandemic. Agreements get revised when circumstances change. Circumstances, in this case, have changed considerably since 2004.
What has changed most visibly is not the hangar itself, but what happens inside it. The community has discovered this space. Pétanque players, yoga groups, martial arts practitioners, pop-up musicians, a cappella singers, domino players and double-dutch rope skippers have all found their way under that bow-truss arch. Neighbors come together seeking shade in Austin's scorching summers. Families spread out on the open floor. All of them coexist, day after day, year after year, as a peaceful community that formed around the space organically, without a permit or a program or a plan.
The Official Record
The City's own advisory body for the Mueller redevelopment, the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport Plan Implementation Advisory Commission (PIAC), has taken formal notice of this reality. In August 2024, the commission voted 8 to 0, with one abstention, to recommend that City Council consider ensuring the hangar's public accessibility through a restrictive covenant, access easement, or similar means; providing food, beverages, and public restrooms; and partnering with a community-based nonprofit organization, including exploring a possible conservancy. In November 2024, the commission voted 8 to 0 to recommend amending Mueller's covenants to establish public access in perpetuity to Mueller's parks, trails, and landmark sites, including the Browning Hangar, even if commercially owned. These are official advisory recommendations to City Council, entered into the public record.
In the August 12 committee meeting, those recommendations went unmentioned. The committee members, focused on design questions, had no particular reason to raise them. The commission's two votes in support of public access were simply absent from a conversation that will shape future community use of the Browning Hangar.
The Design Itself
To be clear about what Banbury is proposing: it is not demolition, and the design reflects genuine preservation thinking. The bow-truss arch remains the building's dominant visual feature, with new commercial additions set behind it in a connecting element that keeps the additions visually subordinate. The original structural footings will remain exposed and publicly walkable. A shade structure on the Airport Boulevard side will improve weather protection. Banbury is pursuing National Register of Historic Places eligibility, which carries real preservation commitments along with its financial benefits.
The committee members engaged seriously with the design. The committee reviewed an earlier version of the project in February 2023, and the current proposal is a more considered result. Two commercial spaces are to be included in the new rear addition. The meeting recording does not identify their tenants.
What the meeting did not address is the question of community access. Whether the pétanque players, the neighbors, the families, and the casual visitors who have made this space what it is will continue to be welcome there freely was not on the agenda. A preserved historic structure and an open community gathering place are not automatically the same thing. The terms of access will be determined not by architecture, but by whatever agreements govern the building's use.
A Deeper History
There is one more dimension to this story worth noting as these decisions take shape. The Browning Hangar stands within a history that is still incompletely documented. During World War II, Browning Aerial Service trained military pilots under the federal War Training Service at University Airport before moving to Mueller in 1946. In that same era, Austin produced Black military aviators of national significance, among them Norman Wilfred Scales, an Austin native who became a Tuskegee Airman, flew approximately 70 combat missions, and is today commemorated by Scales Street on the former Mueller Airport property itself.
No evidence has yet established a direct connection between Scales or other Tuskegee Airmen and the Browning Hangar specifically. But the surviving hangar occupies a landscape where Austin's wartime aviation history, its postwar flying community, and the city's African American aviation history intersect in ways that deserve serious research before the building's future is finalized.
Where Things Stand
The Mueller Master Development Agreement expires December 31, 2027. The November 3, 2026 bond election includes $65.5 million for park buildings and facilities, a category that fits the Browning Hangar's documented infrastructure needs. As of this update, the Historic Landmark Commission's formal review of Banbury's proposal has not yet been scheduled.
There is no reason the interests of the development community, the City, and the people who use this space cannot be reconciled. Other cities have found ways to combine historic commercial reuse with genuine public access. Austin is well positioned to do the same here, and there are mechanisms, including a nonprofit conservancy, bond funding, and negotiated access agreements, that could make it work for everyone involved.
What is needed first is for the broader community to be part of the conversation. The people who have built something real inside that building deserve to know what is being planned for it, and to have a voice in what it becomes. That is a reasonable expectation for any city-owned public space.
This article was updated on September 30, 2026 to correct the name of the Mueller advisory commission and the description of its 2024 recommendations, and to clarify details about the Master Development Agreement.
Return to browninghangar.com.
AUTHOR NOTE
Jeff Brown has been researching and advocating for the long-term public stewardship of the Browning Hangar since 2023. Additional background on the conservancy proposal and capital improvement needs is available at browninghangar.org.