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Vol. II · Edition 2.0 · July 2026 · Austin Development Watch
The 10-Year Records — Vol. II: Armbrust & Brown
What 490 hearings reveal about Austin's #2 entitlement firm — and the hardest-district bet.
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On the numbers: every figure on this page is the certified 10-year, agent-deduped record — 490 hearings; 177 cases; #2 firm by volume (Drenner 632, Thrower 388) — the same values as the
firm leaderboard. The report is certified against the
2026-07-13 recompute and re-gated before release. Figures are stated as the record has them — including the 64.8% postponement rate and the below-baseline D3 approval — with the context that reads them honestly.
Five findings
01
The D3 franchise: the hardest district, the biggest bet. A&B carries 161 hearings in Council District 3 — a third of its entire book, and more than any other firm on the leaderboard (Drenner 143, Thrower 104, Glasco 70). D3 is the city's toughest large district: the all-firm baseline clears just 32.8% approval of decided matters. A&B's D3 record — 150 decided, 40 approved (26.7%), 109 postponed (72.7%), 1 denied — sits below that baseline. Read straight: not a ledger of defeats but a book kept in motion, one denial in 150 decisions on the ground where the market itself only clears a third.
02
The 3-denial decade. Across all 490 hearings, just 3 denials (0.6% of decided). Of 475 decided outcomes: 164 approved (34.5%), 308 postponed (64.8%), 3 denied. The high postponement rate is the tell — matters that might lose are postponed, reworked, and continued rather than forced to a vote. At 2.77 hearings per case, the record reads as postponement-as-strategy, and the report develops the carry-cost that patience buys.
03
A two-partner bench carries three-quarters of the firm. Richard Suttle (224 hearings) and Michael Whellan (166) together account for 390 of the firm's 490 hearings — 79.6%. Supporting bench: Ferris Clements (32), Michael Gaudini (29). Hiring the firm means buying two specific attorneys and their panel relationships; the report scores both, Drenner-report format.
04
Austin's #2 firm by volume — and accelerating. 490 hearings across 177 unique cases, 2016–2026 with no gap years, ranking second only to Drenner (632) and ahead of Thrower (388). Momentum is recent: 127 hearings since 2024 — roughly a quarter of the decade's activity packed into its final ~2.5 years.
05
The new dais layer: ten years of motions on A&B items. The first firm report enriched with the vote-level record — which commissioners most often moved and seconded the firm's matters. Awais Azhar moved 49 A&B items, the most of any commissioner (mover coverage 74.4% of vote rows). And downstream at Council: of the firm's approvals with a Council record in the certified window, 63 of 64 became law. Presented as public-record arithmetic about procedure — the working geometry of the dais, not an insinuation of influence.
Inside the report
An executive summary; ten years of volume with no gap years; an outcome-distribution comparison against all-firm benchmarks; the D3 franchise analysis — the firm's heaviest district book measured against the certified per-district difficulty baseline; attorney-level scorecards for the operating bench; the full postponement-as-strategy read with hearings-per-case grind; the head-to-head at the top of the leaderboard (Drenner · A&B · Thrower); and the new dais record — commissioner mover/seconder counts on the firm's items, with the coverage caveat stated plainly.
Closing with the became-law ledger: of A&B's approved matters that reached a Council record in the certified window, how many carried through to a final ordinance — the pipeline-to-law conversion no prior firm report could print.
This is Vol. II in The 10-Year Records — Austin's entitlement decade, firm by firm. Vol. I is the Drenner Group report; own both as the pair for $899. New here? The free firm leaderboard and State of Austin quarterly give the market-level picture.
What this report is — and is not
Is: structured analysis of 10 years of public PC and ZAP hearing data on Armbrust & Brown. Per-district outcome analysis against certified baselines, attorney-level breakdowns, postponement patterns, the head-to-head leaderboard read, and the vote-level dais record.
Is not: legal advice. Not file-specific recommendations. Not a characterization of the firm's competence, ethics, or intentions. Not a prediction of future cases, and — where the dais record is concerned — not an assertion of influence over any commissioner or any Council outcome; it is public-record arithmetic about procedure, reported with its coverage caveat. Full scope and methodology disclosed in the report.
Who buys this
The firm itself and its attorneys, for their own certified record. Developers and owners selecting counsel — especially anyone with eastside (D3) ground, for whom the district franchise analysis maps directly onto their holdings. Outside counsel and competing firms benchmarking the #2 firm. CRE investors and underwriters pricing entitlement timing and pipeline risk. Anyone tracking the top of the Austin entitlement market professionally.
The report is the decade, decoded once. The Watch Desk is the same record, watching forward — every Monday. See the Watch Desk →
Austin Development Watch · The 10-Year Records, Vol. II · Edition 2.0 · July 2026
Author: Michael Msebenzi ·
[email protected]
Data source: Airtable Cases database, parsed from public City of Austin meeting minutes; certified against the 2026-07-13 recompute.
Corrections welcomed at the address above and will be acknowledged in any future edition.
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