Ted Siff

BY FORREST PREECE

While writing these columns, I love finding out the background on interesting people around town. On a recent afternoon, I talked with Ted Siff, who I have known for decades, and was intrigued to hear his stories.

He lives in an immaculate, historic downtown house on West 11th with his wife, actress Janelle Buchanan. (The house was built in 1858 by Edward Clark, who was Sam Houston’s lieutenant governor, and later served as governor himself.)

I wonder how many people in Austin know that Ted’s mother, an actress who was a drama major at UT, helped found Houston’s famed Alley Theatre and worked there 27 years, ultimately becoming its managing director? Or that his dad owned and ran a chain of shoe stores in Houston? He obviously had high achievers for role models, and he took strides to live up to his potential.

Ted was an active student at Memorial High in Houston. He and his brother were on the debate team and were friends with a lot of the drama students – like Barbara Miller who also moved to Austin and became a TV personality. He was also an Eagle Scout, and while earning merit badges, he learned many life lessons and organizing skills that helped him in college and his later life.

In his first year at UT Law School, Ted connected with Ralph Nader and eagerly became involved with his movement. During the early 1970s, Nader’s Public Interest Research Groups were being put into action na- tionwide – thirty of them — and Ted started the Texas chapter (TexPIRG) here in town. After seeing what Ted accomplished in Texas, Nader granted him an internship and then the assignment to start chapters in Florida and Arizona. “What Nader created through that time was a national organization called Public Citizen — and I think that is an apt description of what I have tried to be throughout my life,” Ted says. ended at West Avenue, and it was proposed to open it through to Lamar, splitting where Duncan Park is now. Helping organize OANA, which opposed these plans, was the birth of Ted’s civic involvement, and he has served as the group’s president for years.

One project that is in the works right now is the proposal, being approved in Washington, to list a large part of OANA as a National Register District of Historic Places. In this area, mostly from West 6th to West 12th and Nueces to West Avenue, there are around 100 properties that are considered historic. This designation will give some property owners tax incentives to improve their properties. He added that OANA backs new buildings in the neighborhood as long as they ideally bury the parking, are residential, and support pedestrian traffic with streetscapes. “We are more YIMBY than NIMBY,” he says.

One organization, among many, that has benefited from Ted’s expertise and energy is the Old Austin Neighborhood Association (OANA). As Ted points out, this area was part of Edwin Waller’s original concept for our city.

OANA started in 1973-74, when the city was proposing to widen (I mean, seriously widen, as in double the footage) West 9th and West 10th Streets from Lavaca to Lamar and make them a “one-way couple.” That is, one would run one-way east and the other one-way west. The city council was gung-ho for this idea. At the time, West 9th

The bulk of his civic involvement has been, and still is, with the capital budget of the city. Since 1992, he has been the finance or campaign chair of almost every city bond election. In 1991, Ted became the Texas State Director of the Trust for Public Land. This group helps cities and counties buy parkland. The Balcones Canyonland Preserve and the Barton Creek Wilderness Park are examples of this process. In the era when the SOS ordinance was being passed, Ted was heavily involved with making both of them reality. “It was my job to buy 1000 acres of land for these tracts—and I did,” Ted says. He adds that if he wanted to point to his major civic involvement, it would be these tasks which resulted in a good deal of green infrastructure in our city and surrounding areas. What does Ted regret? He now wishes he had stayed in law school and finished his degree, but he was sidetracked by co-authoring a book called Ruling Congress, which is still in print, and is an effective outline of how to work the legislative process and engineer the passage of bills. That project consumed significant amounts of his time. Also, in his third year of law school, he worked as an intern for John Hill, the attorney general of Texas. At the same time, an energetic fellow law school student named Mike Levy, one year ahead of him, had started a magazine called Texas Monthly. A year and a half after it launched, he asked if Ted wanted to help him in this endeavor. In 1975, Ted

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Circling back to Ted’s current environmental involvement, he says that bond elections and parks and open spaces are where he spends most of his time. The things he is working on now for the Shoal Creek Conservancy include improving the environment in the Seaholm District. That includes totally restoring and repurposing the Third Street Railroad Trestle and doubling the width of the Hike and Bike Bridge across the creek.

The Shoal Creek Trail Plan also has a bold vision which has the trail going past US 183 all the way to Walnut Creek. Ted says that people don’t realize the headwaters of Shoal Creek and Walnut Creek are close to each other. If you could connect these trails and then link them to the Butler Trail or to the Lance Armstrong Bikeway, you would have one big loop for bikes and people on foot.

It was a concept five years ago and there was funding through the park bond that year to pay for most of the Walnut Creek Trail. Then in 2020, there was funding through the Safe Mobility for All bond to pay for extending the Shoal Creek Trail. “So we are making progress.”

He adds that his working partner in almost all of these endeavors has been George Cofer. Since they are both in their mid-70s, several years ago, they sparked discussions to form a coalition that is now called Austin Outside. It has 69 member organizations – from the American Heart Association to Austin Sunshine Camps. “Through that coalition, these efforts will continue,” Ted says.