Remember when there weren’t any major Austin condo or office towers west of Guadalupe Street in downtown? It’s kind of quaint to look back on now — I’m not old, but I’m old enough to remember the opposition to the 7Rio condo tower proposal at Seventh and Rio Grande Streets back around 2007, which eventually lost about half…
West 17th Street Hotel Brings Height to Downtown Austin’s Northern Gap
Back in May, we covered plans for a hotel bound for the surface parking lot at the southwest corner of West 17th and Lavaca Streets by HRI Development — a New Orleans real estate firm with an impressive portfolio of apartment, condo, and hotel buildings, but none in Austin until now. Clocking in at 0.2 acres total, it’s a fairly…
Congress Avenue’s Pocket Patio Transformation, Mapped
The annual PARK(ing) Day event creates public space in downtown Austin by converting, for a day, many of Congress Avenue’s street parking spaces into temporary parklets. It’s a fun time, but perhaps more importantly, the event serves as a reminder of how much space we’ve sacrificed to parking in the public realm of our most famous street…
Downtown Austin’s Republic Office Tower Gets a Surprise Height Increase
New documents submitted to the City of Austin’s Design Commission bring us an unexpected, but welcome piece of news — the planned downtown office tower known as The Republic will be significantly taller than we thought. The tower’s new application to the Downtown Density Bonus Program, submitted by developers Lincoln Property Company and Phoenix Property Company as…
Austin’s Imaginary Taco Bell Subway System Might Be Worth Digging Into
The mad geniuses at Reddit’s r/SubwaySubway page — a community that, somewhat inexplicably, creates imaginary maps of subway systems for different cities where every Subway sandwich franchise represents a station — have set their sights on Austin. But this time, creator Epicapabilities used the city’s Taco Bell locations, rather than Subway restaurants, to represent the…
Here’s a Snazzy New Look at Downtown Austin’s 5th & Brazos Tower
It’s been less than a week since we found out exactly what we’re looking forward to at the northeast corner of Fifth and Brazos Streets, but when it rains, it pours. Thanks to bKL Architecture, the folks behind the design of the 32-story mixed-use tower set to bring two hotels and 274 apartment units downtown, we’ve got a better…