A rendering of the tower planned at 600 Guadalupe Street, looking southwest. Photo courtesy of Gensler.
It’s been a fun couple of weeks for downtown Austin, with shiny renderings of new towers and other project details practically falling from the sky. Let’s take a few minutes to round up the items on the top of our list — you know, all the fun ones.
600 Guadalupe Tower
A rendering of the 600 Guadalupe tower. Photo courtesy of Gensler.
Renderings for this tower were leaked to the city’s intrepid skyscraper enthusiast community a while back, but until last Friday, there wasn’t any way to confirm the project wasn’t vaporware à la Block 185.
Thankfully, we can put the big NOPE back in the closet on this one, with the Austin American-Statesman confirming the tower as the city’s next tallest and posting additional renderings from architects Gensler. Thanks, Statesman! We’ll probably have more commentary on this tower soon, but for the moment, we’re looking at roughly 62 stories and about 850 feet in height, with office, residential, and retail space.
3rd & Colorado Tower
Day and night renderings of the 3rd and Colorado tower planned at 300 Colorado Street. Photo courtesy of GDA Architects.
The so-called Sullivan’s Steakhouse residential tower will rise 44 stories above the historic building at Third and Colorado Streets — and the steakhouse will reportedly live on, though we’re not sure at the moment if any components of the historic original building will remain.
The planned tower itself is 44 stories in height, with 357,000 square feet of residential space between 315 apartments. There’s also 7,200 square feet of ground floor commercial space described in city documents, and we’ll have to wait and see if the new Sullivan’s is the sole tenant of that space.
The Fairmont Austin
A current view of the Fairmont Austin looking north. You can see their new sign on the bottom part of the building’s right side, and the spire is shaping up too. Photo by James Rambin.
Already topped out at 37 stories and currently working on its spire, the Fairmont is looking pretty much done from the outside, though the state of the interior is unclear.
The skybridge under construction over Red River Street between the Fairmont and the Austin Convention Center. Photo by James Rambin.
We’re also seeing the early steps of construction on the skybridge — officially known as the “Red River Canopy Walk,” stretching from the building’s west side to the Austin Convention Center over Waller Creek. As far as skybridges go, this one seems pretty long, and the design is certainly a little above-average for a building component that often ends up looking like, well, a big glass box.
Fareground
An exterior view of Fareground. It’s almost done! Photo by James Rambin.
This highly-anticipated food hall project at the remodeled courtyard of One Congress Plaza is so close we can taste it. The walls are down at the site and everything’s looking great, so here are a few pictures of what’s going on to get you even more excited than you already were.
A view from inside part of the Fareground structure, showing off the remodeled courtyard at One Eleven Plaza. Photo by James Rambin.
The lineup of restaurants at Fareground is basically a who’s who of Austin restaurant fame, so you’ll probably catch us here for lunch more times than we’d prefer to admit.
Kempelen’s Owls
A rendering and construction drawing of the seven-foot owls planned for the Second Street District. Photo courtesy of New American Public Art / Hollingsworth Pack.
Near the eastern end of the new Second Street Bridge over Shoal Creek, we can expect owls, apparently. As part of a partnership between the city and studio New American Public Art, two seven-foot sculptures of Texas-native great horned owls will be installed by 2018. The sculptures are entirely open source under a creative commons license, meaning you’ll apparently be able to download the plans yourself and build your own owls if you feel so inclined.
Okay, so this one’s not a new building — but c’mon, they’re owls! Big owls!
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