Today, we’re picking up the conversation series originally featured on our sister site, Modern Austin, and sitting down with George Blume, Project Designer at the Austin offices of mega-architecture firm Gensler. Blume is heavily involved in the design of Gensler’s downtown towers, including Third and Shoal, 500 West Second Street, and the upcoming Block 87 mixed-use project, to name a few. He’s also got possibly the most…
Getting to Know Block 71, Downtown’s Most Fascinating Mixed-Use Plan
If we’re being precise, Block 71 is the City of Austin’s assigned number for a 1.75-acre downtown block owned by the University of Texas and bordered by West Seventh, Colorado, West Sixth and Lavaca Streets. But more importantly, it’s also the presumed name of developer Trammell Crow Company’s planned mixed-use complex, set to transform the site with a 36-story office tower, retail, restaurants, an…
South Shore Highline Development is East Riverside’s New Normal
I just can’t quit East Riverside. Between Oracle’s massive new office campus in Lakeshore and the general trend of new projects springing up all the way out to Montopolis and beyond, there’s a reason I keep crawling back. Don’t even get me started on the potential of the Project Catalyst development — point is, there’s suddenly a lot going on in a part…
The Ballad of 1155 Barton Springs, a Project Fighting 40 Years of Bad Luck
Last month, news emerged once again about multifamily residential development on the way at 1155 Barton Springs Road. If that address sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because this site is home to what might be the city’s most spectacularly long-lived example of development vaporware, a project that’s lived and died and been revived so many times over the…
Rainey Street’s 9-Story Mixed-Use Project Moves Forward
Remember Rainey Street’s most mysterious mixed-use project? Looks like we weren’t too far off predicting that we’d see progress on this development in the near future. New documents filed with the city give a closer look at what to expect from the nine-story office and retail development that will soon occupy the food truck park at 78 – 84 Rainey Street, courtesy of…
Cielo Property Group’s 4 East Project Splits the Planning Commission
Tyler Buckler, principal at Cielo Property Group, left the City of Austin’s Planning Commission this week without an answer to his request to build a 90-foot office tower next to the Plaza Saltillo Station in East Austin. Buckler’s company acquired six single family residential lots over the past year to cobble together a half block tract at the northeast…