Downtown Austin’s Getting a 15-Floor Drive-Thru Bank at Fifth and Nueces

Image: Google Maps / James Rambin

We’ve known some flavor of office tower project was headed for the Horizon Bank building located at the northwest corner of West Fifth and Nueces Streets in the “financial district” of downtown Austin since last month, thanks to the reliable canary in the coal mine of city development filings. Though much of the tower’s mystery remained intact at the time of our last coverage, new site plan documents filed with the city late last week by engineering firm Kimley-Horn give us a better understanding of what we’re getting at the .41 acre property spanning 600 – 608 West Fifth Street.

Per the site plan, this new tower will rise 15 floors. That’s pretty short considering the potential of this property, which is unencumbered by Capitol View Corridors, but it’s still a more active downtown use than the existing low-rise bank and its parking lot. We’ve thrown together some of our good ol’ green box massings of the building’s estimated height, which puts it in the ballpark of the IBC Bank across the street:

You know the drill — the massings are roughly accurate in terms of height, not necessarily accurate in terms of shape. We’re just outlining the property. Image: Google Maps / James Rambin

Image: Google Maps / James Rambin

Horizon Bank appears to be developing this project for itself in at least a partial capacity, though it’s unclear if the company will occupy the new building’s entire office space, which adds up to a total of 115,942 square feet. Most importantly, the ground floor of the structure will contain a 6,875-square-foot Horizon Bank branch that includes a drive-thru, similar to the existing building at the site. Above that is six levels of parking garage, with the remaining floors dedicated to offices. 

Here’s a thought — this project, unless there’s another example I can’t remember, will join the weird little Wells Fargo drive-thru hiding on the north end of the One Eleven Congress tower as one of the city’s tallest buildings with a drive-thru on the bottom. Unclear if the designers will pull a One Eleven and separate that part from the rest of the building, or make it pass through the actual bottom of the structure, but it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. Anyway, these documents don’t give us an exact timeline for groundbreaking or completion at the moment, but the existing bank on the property will have to come down first, so keep an eye out!

A selection from Kimley-Horn’s recent city site plan submission describing the new building’s various uses and other design details. Image: Horizon Bank / Kimley-Horn / City of Austin

We’re not sure why this project isn’t going taller, but by designing the building with a floor-to-area ratio below 8:1, its developers are not required to meet the gatekeeper requirements of Austin’s Downtown Density Bonus Program, which would allow the structure to rise considerably higher. Opting out of the program probably saves some money in the short-term, since meeting many of its design requirements — Great Streets-style improvements, a two-star rating in Austin Energy’s Green Building Program, and more — would likely represent a higher overall cost.

Even without the bonus program’s mandated design improvements, local landscape architecture outfit TBG Partners is also named in these new documents, meaning the project’s seemingly still doing something to pretty things up a little at the street level. Regardless, the height is a mildly surprising choice for such an unconstrained downtown location, but unfortunately our height obsession may not always align with the needs of a particular developer or client. It’s really all a matter of perspective, anyway — 15 floors is a long way to fall, it’s just not very tall for an office tower. 

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