Aaaaaghhhh!!! Image: Barshop & Oles Company / James Rambin
Late last week, we prepared our readers for either the silliest or most frightening demonstration this city’s seen in a while, depending on how much you think a few tall buildings represent the desecration of Austin’s soul or whatever. The raising of two cranes by developers Barshop & Oles Company at the Brodie Oaks shopping center on South Lamar Boulevard, intended to show the height of the two tallest towers in the mixed-use redevelopment planned to transform this oasis of pavement into something less like a dead mall, went off without a hitch despite some grim weather.
Image: Barshop & Oles Company
The developers have now shared some user-submitted photos of this demonstration, intended to show how the towers would impact the view from different parts of town including anxious neighborhoods like Barton Hills and the nearby Barton Creek Greenbelt. As seen in the map above, the two cranes reached 160 feet and 275 feet, with the taller crane near the highway. Let’s pop on our monocles and take a gander — we’ve done our best to provide location info for each photo:
Image: Barshop & Oles Company
Above, we’ve got a view of the shopping center looking west from directly across South Lamar Boulevard at its intersection with West Ben White Boulevard — that’s the taller crane at left, with the shorter one off in the distance on the right. The 37-acre Brodie Oaks site is so huge that it’s possible to take a photo of the cranes from somewhere on the property’s parking lot and still make them look kinda far away:
Image: Barshop & Oles Company
Below is a collage of three perspectives, showing views of the cranes from various nearby intersections — what’s really remarkable is that each of these locations are no more than 2,500 feet from the two crane sites, and you can barely see them!
Image: Barshop & Oles Company
Here’s how the taller crane looks from about 5,000 feet away, at the intersection of Barton Skyway and South Lamar Boulevard — we’re glad it’s helpfully circled in red:
Image: Barshop & Oles Company
Next, we see the two cranes from a perspective looking south over the Barton Creek Greenbelt not far from this view on Google Maps:
Image: Barshop & Oles Company
Finally, the one we think matters most — here’s how the cranes look from someone’s backyard on Kathy Cove in CM Ann Kitchen’s neighborhood of Barton Hills:
Image: Barshop & Oles Company
Last week, we theorized that the developers of the Brodie Oaks project were so willing to stage this demonstration because they knew the height of the towers wouldn’t have much of an impact on the surrounding area. Now that we’ve seen how they appear in the real world, do you think some people should feel silly?
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