Demolition Expected for Fifth and Lavaca Corner in Downtown Austin

A rendering of the dual-branded Hilton hotel planned for the southeast corner of West Fifth and Lavaca Streets. Image: MDG / DLR

The news this week that downtown ping pong bar Smash ATX had permanently closed at the southeast corner of West Fifth and Lavaca Streets didn’t come as a huge surprise to us considering the longstanding plans for a dual-branded Embassy Suites and Tempo by Hilton hotel with a combined 480 rooms in a 30-story tower at this site, but if you’re a big “paddlehead” or you just wanted a nice place downtown to book your corporate team-building excursion, you have our sympathies.

Although the site plan for the hotel project here is still working its way through the city’s permit system, the demolition of the two adjacent structures housing the bar has already attained approval from the Historic Landmark Commission and the city, and judging by the timelines provided by developer Merritt Development Group in its public filings we expect this corner to be cleared for construction sometime this year.

Here’s a New View of the Downtown Austin Hotel Planned at Fifth and Lavaca

Even if Smash ATX and its previous incarnation as Spin weren’t our favorite bars in the world due to our preference for slower-paced cue sports over the fast-twitch requirements of ping pong, the six years of paddlin’ at this corner marked a renaissance for the look of the building itself, believe it or not. The main building at the corner was originally built as a garage and distributor for the Exide car battery brand more than a century ago in 1919, but decades later that whimsical facade seen in the photo below was later covered under stucco for some presumably insane reason that is lost to time — it’s the source of almost all the structure’s character, and it wasn’t until Spin took over the place with ping pong in 2018 that the building was remodeled to reveal this facade once again, which means we very indirectly have Susan Sarandon to thank for bringing back a nice-looking building here. 

A view of the Exide Battery service station at 213 West Fifth street during the 1920s. Image: City of Austin

Most Austinites of a certain extraction will best remember this site as the home of storied blues club Antone’s from 1997 to 2013, and during that period the building itself looked like a total dump, which probably added to the shabby mystique of the venue but is sort of a shame now that we know what was hiding underneath all along:

A view of Antone’s at its Fifth and Lavaca location circa 2010. Image: Gary J. Wood / Flickr Creative Commons

Despite never loving the idea of a century-old building with good bones coming down, it’s yet another local lesson on the important distinction between “historic” and “old” — former garages, no matter how good they look, don’t tend to embody the historic merit necessary for preservation unless President Coolidge himself pulled his Lincoln in there for a new battery at some point during the 1920s. More importantly, Antone’s still lives, just a few blocks east down West Fifth Street.