It might not be downtown Austin’s first drive-thru bank, but the Horizon Bank building at 600 West Fifth Street is definitely our newest, originally opened at the northwest corner of West Fifth and Nueces Streets in 2004 as a Sovereign Bank — banks seriously love buying other banks, shuffling them around, changing the name on the sign five times in…
News
Austin real estate news combined with editorial and opinion.
What’s Next for Downtown Austin’s Finest Midcentury Drive-Thru Bank?
City pre-development filings related to utility location by an unknown applicant could point to a tower development at the site of the midcentury San Jacinto Building at 814 San Jacinto Street, a three-story office structure that first opened as a drive-thru branch of the now-defunct City National Bank in 1966. Though we have no official confirmation of a…
Sienna at the Thompson Brings Hotel-Adjacent Apartments to Fifth and Brazos
The 32-floor mixed-use tower development now nearing completion at the northeast corner of Fifth and Brazos Streets contains two Hyatt-owned hotel brands — the Thompson Hotel and the more casual, strategically-lowercased tommie — but atop the hotels and their associated retail closer to the ground at 501 Brazos Street, there’s a substantial residential component occupying the tower’s upper floors…
Colorfield Condos Break Ground at Castle Hill’s Former Graffiti Gallery
A 10-unit condo community in the Castle Hill district directly west of downtown Austin and adjacent to the Clarksville neighborhood has officially broken ground on the site of the city’s well-known and now-relocated outdoor graffiti gallery, formally known since 2011 as the HOPE Outdoor Gallery. The Colorfield condos will occupy the hillside at 1012 Baylor Street, a 1.2-acre property which famously…
East Austin’s George Washington Carver Museum Is Ready To Grow
A long-awaited $58 million expansion plan that would nearly triple the square footage of East Austin’s historic George Washington Carver Museum is expected to receive the green light from Austin’s City Council later this month, with a unanimous vote of approval from the city’s Parks Board and other advisory commissions moving the project forward at the end of the expansion’s yearlong…
The Death and Life of Congress Avenue’s Neglected Historic Buildings
If you follow the (metaphorical) twists and turns of the so-called Main Street of Texas on the downtown stretch of Congress Avenue, you might also know the frustratingly extended story of three adjacent storefronts at 907, 909, and 911 Congress Avenue. The 907 and 909 buildings, both dating back to the 1880s, have historic designation — they’re known as the Grandberry…