A current view of progress at 721 Congress Avenue. Image: Katerra / James Rambin
After a brief pause in local construction due to pandemic-related concerns, work is spinning back up at sites around Austin — and one of them is really, really visible, smack in the middle of downtown at the corner of Eighth Street and Congress Avenue.
A view of the finished Hyatt Centric project, its already striking design amplified by the convenient presence of the lovely State and Paramount theatre signs next door. Shoulders of giants and whatnot. Image: McWhinney / Nelsen Partners
Internal demolition and construction work at the future site of the 31-story, 246-room Hyatt Centric Congress Avenue started all the way back in February at the former art gallery located on the corner at 721 Congress Avenue, but now walls are actually coming down in preparation for the hotel tower project to move forward in earnest. The building is scheduled for completion in fall 2021, according to its developers — and even though it’s a valid question, we’re not really equipped to speculate on just how much current events might change that timeline, if at all.
Carson Nelsen, project designer for the tower’s architects Nelsen Partners, confirmed that demolition of the site’s existing structure and the beginnings of construction are taking place at the corner simultaneously, with the first of many concrete pours for the building’s foundation starting on Monday earlier this week. “We expect construction to continue and completion of the project in fall 2021,” he says.
A rendering of the Hyatt Centric hotel’s lobby space. Image: McWhinney
Speaking of which, if you’re still locked down in your apartment for the foreseeable future, you’ll appreciate that the project’s general contractors at tech-minded California construction firm Katerra are streaming the whole shebang live on webcam:
Real Towersheads remember this project, now a concern of Colorado development outfit McWhinney, was originally announced back in 2016 as the Avenue, which would have been the city’s first apartment tower with no on-site parking. (If you’re a really real Towershead, you’ll recall an even earlier tower plan from back in 2004.)
The Hyatt project isn’t even the first hotel to occupy the address, for that matter — from the 1860s to the mid-1920s, even before the spotlight-hogging Driskill Hotel came on the scene in 1883, the Avenue Hotel stood at this corner, and it’s from these long-gone lodgings that the defunct Avenue apartment tower project found its name.
A few more renderings of the Hyatt Centric tower. Images: Nelsen Partners
Despite the admiration of urbanists and other downtown lifestyle enthusiasts, the carless Avenue apartment plan might have been a little ahead of its time in the eyes of potential investors, and it was rumored that its architects and former developers at Nelsen Partners weren’t able to find enough deep-pocketed folks willing to take the risk, no matter how innovative or interesting it might have been. (Extremely!)
The Hyatt Centric Congress Avenue Austin, scheduled for a fall 2021 opening, will offer guests 246 rooms and an estimated 2,000 square feet of meeting and event space. It will include a vibrant ground-floor restaurant and bar, a second-floor bar, and an eclectic eighth-floor outdoor lounge and bar in addition to a 24-hour fitness center.
— McWhinney*
The good news is that despite the hotel pivot, the tower’s strikingly narrow design — actually the narrowest in town by our measure — is pretty much unchanged from its previous configuration, and it’s looking like the development will nicely activate its corner. Of course, we’ve always got to wonder how current events will impact the future of these projects, but it’s still good to see something happening at the site after all these years — considering the historic State and Paramount theatres are right next door, this demolition is likely a delicate business. Watch closely!
* a good-natured note for the project’s new developers at McWhinney — couldn’t help but notice your portfolio entry for this hotel currently misspells the name of its architecture firm as Nelson Partners rather then Nelsen Partners, and speaking as a guy who constantly gets called “James Ramblin” like I’m the lead singer of some third-rate Allman Brothers cover band, I can’t let this injustice stand without some sort of comment. Don’t worry, this kind of thing also happens to Brett Rhode all the time.
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