Celebrating original Lakeway homes
Article published by the Statesman on Jan. 11, 2017, written by Rachel Rice
In 1971, when Lakeway consisted of the Lakeway Inn, a marina, some newly built infrastructure and 300 vacation homes and homesteads, the Lakeway Land Company sold it all to a Dallas-based developer for $4.5 million, according to “Lakeway: A Hill Country Community” by Lewis H. Carlson. Today, one resident wants to bestow more significance on the original 300 homes that were the beginnings of the city of Lakeway.
Mike Threinen moved to Lakeway permanently after making several visits to the area.
“I fell in love with the neighborhood and the architecture and started doing history research, and that snowballed into learning more and more about how they started the resort, and the architectural review committee,” Threinen said. “We should preserve this and find a way to keep this area and teach people about this area more.”
Threinen started oldlakeway.com for two purposes – to catalogue all of Lakeway’s original homes, built 1971 and earlier, and to create a community of the people living in the “Old Lakeway” area. He’s already put a handful of homes on the site, complete with photos and a paragraph about when the home was built.
“There’s no real neighborhood in Lakeway,” Threinen said. “ So when you think Lakeway, you think of the new upcoming growth and all the new developments in Lakeway, but there’s this whole asset of Old Lakeway that’s under-marketed.”
Eventually, Threinen said, he’d like to create street sign toppers with the original Lakeway logo on them to demarcate the ”Old Lakeway” area. Maybe eventually when the community gets enough heft behind it, he said, they could start a home tour for charity or get other initiatives started.
“What I’m trying to do with the homes is, I’m really trying to (give) the homes a soul, so they’re not just a thing,” Threinen said. “They have a history and they have a life associated with them. Hopefully that will prevent them from being torn down.”