An aerial view of the 2700 East Fifth Street site, with the boundaries of its upcoming office project highlighted in green. The rail line running along the north end of the tract is also visible. Image: Bing Maps / James Rambin
A vaguely triangular piece of land created by the gradual confluence of a rail line with East Fifth Street sounds like a challenging choice of site for East Austin’s next big development, but then again, constraint drives creativity — making the office project bound for a 1.74-acre tract at 2700 East Fifth Street more interesting than most.
Looking towards the southwestern corner of the 2700 building from East Fifth Street. Click for a larger view. Image: Sixthriver
The four-story building, described in recent city planning documents as containing 104,744 square feet of professional office space, is by all accounts a concern of local real estate firm Pearlstone Partners — the propery’s listed owner, 2700 East Fifth JV, LLC, is a special purpose entity of the developer, and Pearlstone successfully sought a mixed-use designation and rezoning for the tract from the city’s Planning Commission enabling the office project earlier this year.
(The site, it’s worth noting, has a checkered past, though it’s been fully remediated since then — if that weren’t the case, this building would not be happening.)
Plans for the structure filed with the city and dating back to late last month provide a pretty close look at its design, thanks to renderings from its architects at Sixthriver. Civil engineering firm Wuest Group and landscape architecture studio Ecoland Design Group also appear in these documents, making the development seemingly an all-local affair at the moment. Here’s a closer look at a few more angles of the project:
A view of the project’s frontage along East Fifth Street, looking roughly north from this perspective. The colorful portion on the right side of the image is its parking garage, which is very whimsically screened. Click for a larger view. Image: Sixthriver
Another perspective of the building from East Fifth Street shows its signage, which simply uses the 2700 address for the time being. It appears this project uses a lot of masonry for its exterior, which is nice. Click for a larger view. Image: Sixthriver
A close-up of the building’s entrance facing East Fifth Street gives us a closer look at its colorful garage screening and other exterior features. Click for a larger view. Image: Sixthriver
In these two roughly similar views of the northern-facing side of the building, the articulation of the structure accommodating the unique curve created by the rail line directly to its north is pretty obvious. Click for a larger view. Image: Sixthriver
The building’s articulation allowing it to follow the rail line running along its north side is visible in the renderings above, but made much more obvious by the site plan of its ground floor included below — plenty of other information about layout and square footages is also included, if you like that sort of thing:
A selection from the project’s site plan, showing its ground floor layout and surroundings. Click for a larger view. Image: Sixthriver
The various firms associated with these plans can’t provide any official statements concerning their involvement or any other details at the moment, so we aren’t able to establish an expected timeline for construction right now — anyway, the building’s site plan still appears to be working its way through the city’s review process, so their guess is probably only a little better than mine. Still, with quite a few office developments rising all around East Austin, this project’s worth your attention.
One last amusing detail is the name used for the development in these documents — “Platform 9.75,” a not particularly well-disguised reference to the hidden train platform of the Hogwarts Express. Despite its nearby rail line and the probable hopes and dreams of at least a few Wizarding-inclined Austinites, anonymous sources connected with the project assure me that the name is just a fun little placeholder. After all, you would probably get incredibly sued for trying something like that.
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