Mueller was Austin’s municipal airport before it was a neighborhood. Robert Mueller Municipal Airport opened in 1930 and served as the city’s commercial airport for decades, expanding through the 1960s to handle more traffic. When Austin-Bergstrom International Airport opened south of downtown in 1999, the old airport closed and its 700 acres sat available for redevelopment just three miles from downtown Austin.
The plan for what came next started well before the airport actually closed. A citizens’ group formed in the 1980s to push for relocating the airport and reusing the land, and by the late 1990s a neighborhood coalition and a city-appointed task force were shaping what the site would become. The city selected Catellus Development Corporation as master developer in 2002, and the first homes went up a few years later, with residents moving in starting in 2007.
What resulted is a New Urbanist community: a connected street grid instead of cul-de-sacs, garages tucked into rear alleys, homes built close to the sidewalk, and a deliberate mix of housing types and price points within the same blocks. It’s still being built out today, with new sections of homes and commercial space added in phases as the community grows toward its planned total. If you want a broader sense of how Mueller compares to other parts of the city, I cover more of that on my Austin, TX page.
TLDR (Too Long; Didn’t Read): Living in Mueller, Austin TX
- Mueller sits on the site of Austin’s old municipal airport, which closed in 1999 and was rebuilt as a planned, mixed-use community starting in the mid-2000s
- Housing includes single-family homes, townhomes, condos and apartments, built to Austin’s green building standards with a mix of architectural styles
- Aldrich Street is the neighborhood’s retail and dining corridor, with the Thinkery children’s museum and an Alamo Drafthouse location nearby
- Mueller Lake Park and a connected system of trails and greenways run through the neighborhood, and Branch Park hosts a regular farmers market
- Austin ISD schools serving the area include Blanton Elementary, Kealing Middle School, and both McCallum and Northeast Early College high schools
I’ve sold homes in Mueller for years, and it’s one of the few Austin neighborhoods where the master plan actually shows up in daily life. You notice it walking to coffee, biking the greenway, or just looking at how close your porch sits to the sidewalk. Here’s what I tell buyers and sellers who ask me about living here.
The housing stock: what you’ll actually find
Mueller is planned for roughly 6,900 homes, split close to evenly between single-family houses and multifamily product like townhomes, condos, and apartments. That mix means the neighborhood doesn’t read as one style of house repeated block after block. You’ll see craftsman-influenced single-family homes with front porches, modern rowhouses with rooftop decks, and condo and loft buildings with ground-floor retail underneath.
Every home built in Mueller has to meet a green building standard set by the city, either a three-star rating under the Austin Energy Green Building program or LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. In practice that means better insulation, more efficient HVAC systems, water-conscious landscaping, and in a number of cases rooftop solar. It’s one of the reasons Mueller has one of the highest concentrations of green-certified buildings anywhere in Austin, and it’s a detail worth asking about when you’re comparing a Mueller listing to a home in an older, established neighborhood where standards weren’t part of the original build requirements.
Aldrich Street: the retail and dining corridor
Aldrich Street is Mueller’s main commercial strip, and it was built with the same mixed-use approach as the rest of the neighborhood: restaurants and shops at street level, office space and residences above. Local restaurants and bars line the street, including Honest Mary’s, Marufuku Ramen, and WhichCraft Tap Room, along with a rotating list of newer additions as the district fills in. Two parking garages serve the corridor at an hourly rate, and several businesses validate for customers.
It functions as a walkable commercial center for the surrounding residential blocks rather than a strip you’d drive to from elsewhere, which is part of what makes daily errands in Mueller different from a lot of suburban Austin.
Mueller Lake Park, the Thinkery, and Alamo Drafthouse
Mueller Lake Park sits near Aldrich Street and anchors the neighborhood’s public green space, with a lake, open lawn, and paths connecting to the broader trail system that runs through the community’s greenways. The Southwest Greenway links different sections of Mueller together on foot or by bike, so you can get from a residential block to the retail district or a park without needing a car.
The Thinkery, a roughly 40,000-square-foot children’s museum, sits on the edge of the park and runs indoor and outdoor exhibits centered on science, technology, and hands-on learning. Next to it, an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema location shows current releases with a full food and drink menu, and it’s attached to Barrel O’ Fun, a bar with cocktails, local beer, and games.
Branch Park, a short walk away, hosts the Texas Farmers’ Market at Mueller on a regular schedule, with local produce and food vendors set up outdoors.
Schools serving Mueller
Mueller falls within Austin ISD. Blanton Elementary, just north of Bartholomew Park, serves pre-K through fifth grade. From there, students feed into either Kealing Middle School, Dr. Bertha Sadler Means Young Women’s Leadership Academy, or Gus Garcia Young Men’s Leadership Academy, depending on enrollment choice. At the high school level, Mueller is zoned to both McCallum High School and Northeast Early College High School. Northeast Early College is part of Austin ISD’s early college model, which lets students take dual-credit coursework toward an associate degree alongside their high school diploma. I’d always recommend confirming current attendance zones and program details directly with Austin ISD before making a decision based on schools, since boundaries and offerings can shift from year to year.
The property owners association and design guidelines
Because Mueller was built out under a master development agreement between the city and Catellus, new construction went through a review body called the New Construction Council before it could be built, using standards laid out in the Mueller Design Book covering site planning, building types, and streetscape. Once a home is built and sold, a separate Modifications Committee under the Mueller property owners association reviews changes owners want to make afterward, like additions, fencing, or exterior updates. Some smaller changes, such as replacing a roof with matching materials, don’t require approval, while things like solar panels or rain harvesting equipment do need a review before installation, even though the community generally encourages both. If you’re buying in Mueller, I always walk clients through what the POA covers and what’s expected before starting any exterior project, since it’s a different process than a typical single-family neighborhood without an active design review body.
Getting around from Mueller
Mueller sits along Airport Boulevard, a few miles northeast of downtown Austin and close to the University of Texas campus, the Hancock neighborhood, and the Cherrywood area. Manor Road and Airport Boulevard both provide direct routes toward downtown and toward I-35, and the neighborhood’s internal street grid was built to move bikes and pedestrians as easily as cars rather than funneling everything onto one arterial. Capital Metro bus routes run through Mueller as well, connecting to other parts of the city’s transit network, and the connected trail system makes it possible to bike to the University of Texas campus or into central Austin without spending much time on a major road.
The Mueller market right now
Inventory in Mueller has been running higher than it was a year ago, and homes here have generally been selling faster than the broader Austin average, with typical days on market landing around two weeks in recent months. Price per square foot has stayed relatively stable, ticking up modestly year over year even as overall price growth in the neighborhood has cooled off somewhat, in line with the wider Austin market.
Because Mueller’s housing stock spans everything from condos to larger detached homes, pricing varies a lot depending on product type, square footage, and how close a given block sits to Aldrich Street or the park. If you’re comparing listings, it helps to look at price per square foot alongside the total price, since a condo and a single-family home on the same block can carry very different numbers for very different reasons. I walk buyers through that comparison regularly, and I’m happy to pull current, specific numbers for whatever type of home you’re looking at rather than relying on neighborhood-wide averages that can be misleading for any one property.
What it’s like day to day
The thing that stands out to me about Mueller, compared to a lot of newer development in Austin, is how much of daily life you can handle on foot. Coffee, groceries at the neighborhood H-E-B, a movie, dinner, and a walk around the lake are all within the same few blocks for most residents. The alley-loaded garages mean the street-facing side of most homes is a front porch or a stoop rather than a driveway, which changes how the blocks feel when you’re walking them.
It’s also still growing. New phases of the development continue to add homes, retail space, and public amenities, so the neighborhood you see today is not its final form. That’s worth factoring into any long-term decision about buying here, since nearby construction and continued build-out are part of living in Mueller for the time being.
Working with me on a Mueller purchase or sale
I’m Robbie English, REALTOR and broker with Uncommon Realty here in Austin. I’ve worked with buyers and sellers across Mueller’s different housing types, from condos on Aldrich Street to single-family homes further into the neighborhood, and I know how differently those products move in the current market. If you want to talk through what’s available in Mueller right now, or you’re thinking about listing a home here, you can find more about my background on my about page, or reach out directly and I’ll walk you through it.
Robbie English, REALTOR, Broker at Uncommon Realty.
