13 Months After Ominous Heritage Tree Vote, Endeavor Breaks Ground On Bowie Street Project

Back in August, AustinTowers updated you on the new specs for Endeavor’s Bowie Street project, called 3eleven, and said construction would begin soon.

Now it seems construction is indeed underway, according to a recent report in the Austin American-Statesman. The construction timeline is about 24 months.

The project’s fate, in 2011, was in question after the Austin Planning Commission voted 5-4 to protect a 70-year-old Pecan tree on site that had thrived while sprouting from asphalt. (The vote was a great showcase of the ideological and political forces at play in Austin. Former Planning Commission Chair Dave Sullivan also showcased why he had become such a well-respected arbitrator in Austin.)

What’s notable is that despite the handwringing in real estate and pundit groups regarding the issue, market forces (read: the high potential to make a buck) compelled the developers to forge ahead with a remarkably similar project to the one it pitched initially by moving the tree.

Wedged between the Spring Condos and the Monarch apartments, the initially proposed tower was an office-residential high rise reaching 400 feet high, and that matches the current project breaking ground now, which will have 36 stories with 359 luxury apartments, 42,000 square feet of office space and about 3,400 square feet of retail space.

YNN reports: Crews are going to put the tree somewhere on the east side of the property along Shoal Creek “but moving it will be an expensive, three-month process.”

Michael Lynd, a San Antonio developer who partnered with Endeavor on the project and secured financing told the San Antonio Business Journal the project will be “one of the finest luxury residential rental buildings in all of downtown Austin” and the paper reported the high-rise will have a rooftop garden/dog park on the 10th floor; a sky deck, club room and fitness facility on the 31st floor and a pool on the 36th floor.

So, regardless of what barriers must be overcome in Downtown Austin to develop – whether those barriers are for better or for worse – this project seemingly negates many arguments that Austin’s development policies are scarring away marquee projects. At the end of the day, that could provide the cover for policy makers to make more stringent policy, and enforce it.

As real estate sage Charles Heimsath – who must be the most quoted man in the American-Statesman’s history – told the paper: demand for apartments downtown is “extraordinary” with 97 percent occupied, fetching rents that are more than twice the city average.