Image: Waterline / Lincoln Property Company / Kairoi Residential
Waterline, the 74-story “supertall” tower project poised to break the state’s height record upon its expected completion in late 2026, is approximately halfway through its construction schedule, with the building now rising past the 35-floor mark and increasingly visible on the downtown Austin skyline.
The mixed-use building by development partners Lincoln Property Company and Kairoi Residential is set to contain 703,000 square feet of office space, 352 apartments, a five-star hotel with 252 keys, and 27,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space at ground level — and the 1,022-foot tower will rise 20 feet higher than Houston’s 75-story JP Morgan Chase Tower, which currently holds the record for Texas’ tallest occupied structure.
Image: Waterline / Lincoln Property Company / Kairoi Residential
Alongside Lincoln and Kairoi, the all-star development team for Waterline includes general contractors DPR Construction, civil engineers WGI, hotel partner 1 Hotels, and a laundry list of design firms including KPF, HKS, Michael Hsu Office of Architecture, Studio Mai, TBG Partners, and Nudge Design. The marketing team for the project has recently updated the building’s site with a number of fresh renderings, but what’s really impressive to us is the new virtual tour of the building built by architectural visualization firm TMRW, with its “SpaceWalk” platform allowing users to navigate several areas of the building in detailed 3D. This tech has been around for a few years now, but we still think it’s pretty mind-blowing stuff:
Bragging rights on height aside, we believe the really transformative impact of the tower for most Austinites will take place a lot closer to the ground — the project’s large retail package and integration with the Waterloo Greenway trail network along Waller Creek on the western edge of the property should bring the Rainey Street District a new entertainment hub, with its prominent location at the corner of East Cesar Chavez and Red River Streets serving as a sort of informal gateway for the public from the rest of downtown to the Rainey neighborhood. Although the building’s dizzying height is impressive, the thoughtful design of its street-level and creekside spaces will be the true test of Waterline’s staying power. Height records are made to be broken, after all.
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