The City of Austin is embarking on an ambitious new project to remake their most active avenue. Sixth Street may be known for its music, bars, and nightlife, not mobility or safety, but that could change. 

The Sixth Street Mobility and Revitalization Project will widen sidewalks and halve the number of car lanes to prioritize pedestrian traffic, and it anticipates beginning construction in 2027. The change only applies to East Sixth Street, the portion of the boulevard between Congress Avenue and I-35. Last December, Transportation and Public Works announced their recommendation for a design that prioritizes sidewalk paths over bike lanes, which other alternatives had proposed. Lalani Romani, a Capital Improvement Program Manager at the City of Austin, explained the importance of rebuilding Sixth Street.

“It’s one of the most iconic places in Austin,” Romani said. “It’s a place that attracts tourists and something that locals want to visit. There’s a need to see some revitalization, make it more of an 18-hour street.”

The concept of an 18-hour street refers to a hub where visitors can find suitable activities from morning until after midnight. Currently, the portion of Sixth Street west of I-35 is dominated by bars, lending to the label of ‘Dirty Sixth’, which Museum of the Weird manager Lanaya Mandolesi suggested the city now wants to avoid.

“I think they’re trying to push away from ‘Dirty Sixth’ and look at ‘historical’ Sixth,” Mandolesi said. “The big barriers came up last summer. Before that, it was all parking.”

The lack of available parking has limited foot traffic to Museum of the Weird, and other establishments expressed discontent with how changes could impact business. Paul Eighmey, the owner of Casino el Camino on Sixth Street who goes by the nickname Casino and has lived in Austin for 35 years, identified a different motivation behind the rebuilding. According to him, the city government’s intentions are to make more money, regardless of input from the people their decision will affect.

“I think the city government wants to gentrify everything,” Casino said. “ They want to make the most money and the most taxes out of an area … None of the city people come down here and get any input from anybody, they just look at it and want to fix it.”

Casino suggested that the people who moved to Austin in recent years are pushing the minority business owners out as prices rise. The street has encountered problems with homelessness in the past, and the city may be looking to renew its reputation, recently dubbing it ‘Old Sixth’. 

“A lot of people, well intentioned liberals with a lot of money, don’t realize they’re pricing out people who are actually working class people and minorities,” Casino said. “Austin has priced out, it used to be way more diverse. Austin’s becoming more like metropolitan Dallas in that it’s just rich white people.”

Sixth Street has encountered problems with homelessness in the past. Currently, Sixth Street’s target demographics primarily consist of college students and tourists. Per its stated goals, Austin wants to be able to bring in varying types of people, including different age groups.

“It’ll bring more diverse groups of people to the street,” Romani said. “People of all ages that are able to use this street, people of different races, people from different places.”

Romani shared an alternative explanation behind Sixth Street’s being rebuilt. She stated that the city government wants Sixth Street to reflect Austin, and what it represents. That they want it to thrive not only at night but at the day too.

“I think we want to create a street that reflects what Austin is and what we want it to be,” Romani said. “That’s the idea behind the 18-hour street, that it’s not just a street that thrives at night but thrives 18 hours of the day. Naturally, as a result of that, the hope is that it will encourage people of all types to come visit.”

Romani stated that some business owners favored the decision. Casino indicated that many other business owners share his discontent with the plan.

“I don’t think it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up,” Casino said. “I know that most of the people who work here and spend time down here don’t like the changes that are coming.