The City of Austin currently owns 1,765 properties totaling nearly 14,000 acres. 1,148 of those properties have no improvements. A 2020 Point In Time count from ECHO reveals the number of people sleeping unsheltered that night was at least 1,574. Why hasn’t the City of Austin endeavored to create a joint venture with an operator to utilize a fraction of…
Imagining Homeless Housing at Austin’s Vacant City-Owned Home Depot
Since 2008, the City of Austin has owned the approximately 13.7-acre empty former Home Depot store on East St. Johns Avenue near the interchange of Interstate 35 and Highway 183 in the St. John neighborhood. At the time, the city hoped to use the site for a courthouse or police station, but this never materialized — and more than a decade later that…
Developments Planned at Former Austin Legends Dart Bowl and Threadgill’s
Nine months after the pandemic’s economic impact permanently shuttered legendary local bowling alley Dart Bowl with more than 60 years of business under its belt, its owners are seeking to develop an apartment complex atop the 4.14-acre property at 5700 Grover Avenue in the Brentwood neighborhood of North Central Austin — which should presumably help the family partnership behind…
This Photo Has Everything You Need To Know About Sixth Street in the 1970s
The stretch of Sixth Street running east of Congress Avenue in downtown Austin has enjoyed many colorful lives over the 180-odd years since the city’s founding — periods of boom and bust motivated by surrounding growth and changing transportation systems have taken this street from an enclave of minority-friendly immigrant-owned retail stores all the way to the…
Google’s Future Home at Block 185 Has Already Transformed Austin’s Skyline
Block 185, the downtown Austin office tower project best known as the future home of Google, has made significant progress since its groundbreaking back in the downright prehistoric era of 2019 — and though it hasn’t reached its full height of 594 feet just yet, the 35-floor building’s ever-growing prominence on the downtown skyline is becoming increasingly difficult to…
Parkside Brings Mueller Its First Real-Deal Density-Loving Condo Community
Approximately 17 years into its transformation from an Austin airport to a master-planned neighborhood, you might say Mueller is running out of surprises — most of its sprawling 711 acres are now built out on behalf of its master developers at Catellus. We’re excited to see how an expected future apartment project fits around the iconic former Mueller Airport’s…