An aerial view of the South Lamar Boulevard land assembly soon to be developed into a mixed-use complex including an office and apartment building, each with ground-floor retail. Image: Google Maps
Hey, did you know that “vertical mixed-use” can mean something besides just apartments on top of a restaurant? It’s true! According to recent city documents, a mixed-use project planned by developer Ardent Residential will build 138,780 square feet of office space, along with 309 apartment units, in two separate buildings on a land assembly including 1303, 1311, and 1401 South Lamar Boulevard.
These adjacent addresses, all owned by business entities associated with local investment firm Seamless Capital, comprise a 3.88-acre tract:
A map of the area around the 1303-1401 site, with its exact boundaries highlighted in red. Image: Google Maps
This plan joins a couple of projects nearby delivering some sort of office space in the area, which makes sense considering the proximity to restaurants, bars, and other cool stuff — this same cultural draw has previously encouraged office developments on East Sixth Street and around the Rainey Street District, so it makes sense we’d eventually see this happen here as well.
(Combining this new project’s square footage with the finished development a little further south at 2010 South Lamar, and on the way nearby at the Bouldin Creek site, gives us a total of at least 366,529 square feet of new office space for the immediate region. That’s nothing to sneeze at!)
Developer Ardent’s existing portfolio includes the Rhode Partners-designed Gibson Flats apartments directly north of this location, along with the Post South Lamar mixed-use building just across the street. The 1303-1401 site, named in these documents only as “Seamless Tract” after its owners, is currently home to locations of Austin’s Automotive Specialists, Genie Car Wash, and Jiffy Lube.
Site plan filings indicate all three existing businesses — Austin’s Automotive Specialists is already closed, for what it’s worth — will be removed to clear the land for the construction of two new buildings, both of which are designed by architects STG Design. On the north end of the assembly, plans show a four-story office building with additional restaurant space on the ground floor facing South Lamar Boulevard, while the larger southern portion of the tract will contain a five-story apartment structure with three ground-floor retail spaces facing the street.
It’s business as usual at Genie Car Wash, though probably not for long. Photo by James Rambin.
The buildings will share two levels of below-grade parking, which along with some ground-level parking will total a whopping 718 spaces. Both buildings’ orientation and their various uses can be seen in the overall site plan for the development:
An overall site plan for the Ardent development at 1303-1401 South Lamar Boulevard. Click for a larger view. Image: Ardent Residential / STG Design
A driveway will separate the two buildings, with additional access provided by a second driveway cut through the adjacent lot just south of the tract via a joint use agreement. This neighboring lot currently contains a 7-11 gas station, which doesn’t appear to be impacted by this new development outside of the extra driveway.
The western-facing elevation (top) of the 1303-1401 project’s five-story residential building shows the side facing South Lamar Boulevard, including its ground-floor retail component. The southern (middle) and northern (bottom) elevations show the building from its side angles. Click for a larger view. Image: Ardent Residential / STG Design
These northern (top) and western (bottom) elevations for the 1303-1401 project’s four-story office building give us an idea of this structure’s appearance, though we’ll have to wait a little longer for color. The bottom image, showing the structure’s western elevation and ground-floor retail space, is how the building will appear from South Lamar Boulevard. Image: Ardent Residential / STG Design
With another apartment development expected to bring 328 more units to a storage facility site only a few blocks south of here, this stretch of South Lamar Boulevard may soon have itself a fairly robust “urban canyon” of vertical mixed-use development on both sides of the street — a source of anxiety for area neighborhood associations, but also a fairly predictable direction for a major artery so close to downtown.
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