Houston-based Allen Harrison Company has made its first public move on downtown Austin’s historic Depot Hotel at 504 East Fifth Street, by revealing plans to demolish the non-historic structures on site. Until recently, the site was the location of Carmelo’s restaurant. Michele Lynch, a land use specialist with Metcalfe Wolff Stuart & Williams, will make their case…
For Bouldin Creek’s Hooters Preservationists, Size Definitely Matters
The residents of the Bouldin Creek neighborhood in South Austin must really love wings. That’s at least the impression I’m getting from a recent Austin Monitor article covering the Stream Realty Partners development of a mixed-use office building at 425 West Riverside Drive, a large triangular lot occupied by the city’s only Hooters restaurant and not…
You Are Here: Windsor Park
Windsor Park, the assumed name for a region of neighborhoods occupying much of central Austin’s northeastern quadrant, just might be the city’s most well-preserved history lesson on the post-WWII suburbanization of the United States. Laid down from scratch, streets and all by local mega-builder Nash Phillips/Copus, the growth of master-planned subdivision projects in the city was so…
Capitol Complex Master Plan’s First Phase Brings State-Sponsored Urbanism to Downtown Austin’s Dead Zone
I’ll start by staking out a risky position for a blog like this: Downtown Austin is a pretty good place. Compared to, say, the moribund central business districts of Dallas or Houston, Austin’s original 179 blocks are, for the most part, a thriving patch of round-the-clock city life. Well, for the most part. But once…
In Decades Past, Austin Was Also Cold
As the remnants of yesterday’s small ice storm quickly evaporate and the temperature climbs back up into the 60s this weekend, it’s nice to remember that the ability of freezing temperatures to completely shut down the city is nothing new. But the record-setting storm that broke all of our brains in the first place happened…
Five Things to Like and Five to Improve for the North Shoal Creek Neighborhood Plan
Susan Somers is a north Austin resident near the North Shoal Creek area, President of urbanist organization AURA, and the genius gif editor who made this blog’s most famous piece pounce. The city recently released a draft version of the North Shoal Creek Neighborhood Plan . North Shoal Creek is on the far edge of what you might consider north central Austin –…