A view looking north up the finished Sabine Street Promenade from East Fourth Street. Image: City of Austin
After languishing in Austin’s own version of “development hell” for roughly a decade, the Sabine Street Promenade is under construction even as we speak. To be exact, it’s been under construction for at least two months now — we’ve walked past this site like three times and assumed someone else had already noted this long-awaited bit of downtown improvement was finally moving forward. But nobody has!
Scooters patiently awaiting the pedestrian improvements headed for Sabine Street. From this perspective, we’re looking south towards the project, which is currently underway between Fourth and Sixth Streets in downtown Austin. Photo by James Rambin.
So, what is it? First conceptualized as part of the Waller Creek District Master Plan and funded by mobility bonds passed in 2010 and 2012, the project converts the stretch of Sabine Street running between Fourth and Sixth Streets on the eastern edge of downtown to what the urban design-inclined often call a “festival street.”
A street view for part of the section of Sabine Street currently undergoing improvement.
This translates to a more human-friendly configuration that, among other tweaks, adds two-way bike lanes, new trees and other landscaping, more benches, extra lighting, safety bollards, re-striped (and reduced) parking, buried power lines, public art of some variety, and big-ol’ 18-foot sidewalks running down either side.
These renderings from the city’s site for the promenade project aren’t dated, but they kinda look like screenshots from a PS2 game, don’t they? From this perspective, we’re looking south down Sabine Street from East Sixth Street. Image: City of Austin
You might think of the promenade as a jazzed-up version of what the city does with its Great Streets program — in other words, the way all downtown streets should look.
Looking northwest towards the finished promenade between Fourth and Fifth Streets. Image: City of Austin
As the project’s description from the city’s Public Works Department explains, this configuration for the street has a bonus on top of the pedestrian and cycling benefits — it creates a new public space that could even potentially be closed temporarily to traffic and used as a venue for event programming.
The Sabine Street Promenade project, located along Sabine Street between 4th and 6th Streets, gives priority to bicyclists and pedestrians by creating a festival street atmosphere.
This project consists of transforming a one-way roadway and sidewalk into a right-of-way to enhance connectivity between the existing Lance Armstrong Bikeway and the historic building fabric. The proposal to create a thoroughfare for cyclists and pedestrians along the west side of the right-of-way is intended to provide an environment for events without disrupting local access for vehicular traffic.
— Project Description, City of Austin Public Works Department
Looking southeast over the full promenade. The city has clearly taken some creative liberties with the 3D buildings, since we’re pretty sure the Sabine on Fifth condos don’t look exactly like that. Image: City of Austin
The utility of this space for outdoor events is pretty obvious. This stretch of Sabine Street is steps from the convention center, Waller Creek, and the entertainment district on East Sixth Street, but it’s also not super critical for the flow of traffic compared to other streets — and thus its calming or even periodic closure shouldn’t cause too many connectivity issues on this side of downtown. Everybody wins!
Construction on the Sabine Street Promenade underway in front of the Sabine on Fifth condos. Photo by James Rambin.
Per the city, the project is expected for completion sometime this summer. Though its changes aren’t quite as dramatic as the nearby vision for transforming the Waller Creek corridor, which the promenade is intended to compliment at least somewhat, smaller-scale placemaking efforts of this variety are key for making downtown a better neighborhood at the human scale. Folks, we love to see it.
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