After six-ish years working in urban planning and design, I can confidently say that nothing gets people more riled up than parking — not even traffic compares. This is especially true in Austin, as we frequently hash out the merits of parking-centric topics like parking minimums, parking podiums, event parking, and residential parking permits. The city’s Residential…
Getting to Know 44 East Avenue, Raising the Roof in the Rainey Street District
Although our first good look at the Block 185 office tower was obviously the hottest item at last week’s meeting of the City of Austin’s Design Commission, another topic of interest showed up on the agenda — 44 East Avenue, a downtown Austin condo project planned atop a roughly .68-acre plot in the Rainey Street District by Vancouver…
A Brief History of Downtown Austin’s Avenue Lofts
Avenue Lofts , located at 410 East Fifth Street in downtown Austin, might be the city’s most architecturally underrated residential property. This 1940s state office building, adapted for condo use by local real estate development firm the Sutton Company in 1999, retains the original Art Moderne stylings common for many institutional buildings of the era — in…
Google’s New Home at Block 185 is Downtown Austin’s Next Signature Tower
Block 185 is an all-star tower. This 35-floor office building by national developer Trammell Crow Company, which broke ground last month in downtown Austin, is already leased in full by tech juggernaut Google, and features a striking sail-like design courtesy of “starchitecture” outfit Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects. For such a stacked project, it’s kind of surprising how few renderings…
Here’s What We’re Calling Downtown Austin’s Unnamed Northwest District
What should we call the northwest corner of downtown? That’s the latest burnin’ question we asked our readers earlier this month, in an effort to define the identity of a growing neighborhood that we’ve seen called Uptown, North Side, Museum District, and so forth. We ended up with 75 responses — and counting — from Austinites willing to humor us…
Mueller’s First Boutique Hotel Takes Shape in the Aldrich Street District
Recently-launched hospitality brand Origin Hotel Collection plans to develop a five-story hotel with design from celebrated local architects Lake Flato atop an empty lot in the Aldrich Street District of Austin’s master-planned Mueller community, according to city filings from earlier this year. Called Origin Hotel Mueller in these documents, the project is situated on a 0.4-acre site at 1825 McBee Street, directly north of the…