Image: Avenue Lofts
Downtown Austin condo community Avenue Lofts has sold to local real estate developers Wilson Capital, according to the firm. This five-story, 38-unit building at 410 East Fifth Street, originally built as state offices in 1943 and adapted for condo use in the late 1990s, has been recently marketed as a prime location for new tower development — its 0.8-acre half-block site is unconstrained by Capitol View Corridors or other height restrictions, with a potential floor area ratio of 25 to 1 allowing a new building of approximately 883,000 square feet.
This transaction, the sale price of which was not disclosed, marks the fourth recent buyout of an established condo community in downtown Austin with a larger development in mind. Its peers include the sale of the Villas on Town Lake, the Railyard condos, and Brazos Lofts, all three expected to host major new towers.
Marketing materials for the Avenue Lofts site from real estate firm CBRE, which brokered the Wilson Capital acquisition of the property, showed speculative renderings of a tower here that could be built under current entitlements and other restrictions. There’s no indication that Wilson Capital’s tower will look like this, of course, but it’s a wonderful visualization of how much density could fit at this address beyond the current five-story building. Image: CBRE
The Railyard and Brazos Lofts are both located only a block away from the Avenue Lofts, and together they represent millions of square feet of potential growth — alongside other projects expected nearby including an office tower at Fourth and Brazos and a possible building atop the former Carmelo’s site, it’s our belief that the majority of Austin’s skyline-altering new development in the 2020s will take place east of Congress Avenue, with these and other towers along Project Connect’s transit axis creating a new center of gravity for the southeastern corner of downtown.
“Austin’s downtown is experiencing a rapid evolution due to unprecedented levels of population growth and business relocations,” said Taylor Wilson, President of Wilson Capital. “We’re excited to contribute to this evolution through the thoughtful reimagining of Avenue Lofts. An exciting aspect of this redevelopment opportunity is its proximity to the future Blue Line, providing future residents with a sleek new transit option. We’re native Austinites and we care deeply about what gets built in our city. We believe it is important to add intentionally designed density along the City’s transit corridors to accommodate its growth. While our long-term redevelopment plans for Avenue Lofts are still being formed, we are focusing heavily on turning this into something that benefits the City and those who wish to call Austin home.”
— Wilson Capital
The position of Avenue Lofts is extremely favorable for upcoming patterns of downtown growth, facing Brush Square one block north of the Austin Convention Center, the Hilton Austin and its 5 Fifty Five condos, and particularly Capital Metro’s downtown Red Line rail station that will eventually become a transit hub for Project Connect’s new Blue Line — making an Avenue Lofts redevelopment ideal for transit-oriented housing or office space. It’s also directly south of the major stretch of bars along East Sixth Street, which only makes us more curious about the future of this troubled entertainment district as new stakeholders enter the fray.
An aerial view of the Avenue Lofts building and its surroundings from marketing materials prepared by CBRE. Image: CBRE
The buyout negotiated between between the developer and the owner’s association of the condo offers current Avenue Lofts residents the option of leasing back their units while plans for the property are finalized, according to Wilson Capital. There’s no timeline or other information available regarding the nature of this site’s redevelopment at the moment, though the firm states it already has 1,188 multifamily units currently under construction in the Austin metro area.
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