East Sixth ‘Micro-Unit’ Project Gets Bigger, but Its Apartments Stay Small

The Alamo-like building containing Dan’s Hair Styling at 1812 East Sixth Street, as seen in 2017. Image: Google Maps

An apartment project bringing 60 “micro-unit” apartments to the site of a shuttered longtime East Austin barbershop near the corner of East Sixth and Chicon Streets has a taller new look courtesy of local architecture firm Mark Odom Studio.

A view of the micro-unit apartment project planned at 1812 East Sixth Street — providing easy access to cocktail bar Whisler’s next door, but likely increasing the wait time for your mezcal. Image: Mark Odom Studio

Planned for several years atop a 0.26-acre lot at 1812 East Sixth Street by a team reportedly led by local developer Nathan Vargo, the residential project — which has recently gone by the name Sixth and Chicon, but previously called 1812 Apartments — is currently listed for sale at $6.9 million as a “shovel-ready” investment currently in the final stages of city development permitting.

Previously planned with a different design, the Mark Odom Studio version of the project now sports six floors instead of five, and 60 units instead of 40 — welcome density in a region of East Austin that has undergone significant growth even since the project’s first appearance in early 2019. 

A view of the previous design for the apartment community released by its developers in 2019. The building planned here is now one floor taller and contains twenty more units. Image: PLACE Designers / Novium Group

The 34,375-square-foot structure will reportedly contain studios and one-bedroom units at an average size of 450 square feet, and according to its listing the project is expected to be delivered as a short-term rental community with partially furnished units. The community will also not include a significant parking component, focusing instead on creating a “multimodal transportation environment” providing residents with easy access to transit, bike share, and ride sharing-services “to reduce or eliminate the need for single-occupancy vehicle trips.” Though filings from last year indicate a targeted completion by 2022, the project’s current timeline is unknown.

Dan’s Hair Styling, the barbershop at this site previously owned and operated by Dan Ojeda Sr., celebrated its 50th anniversary of business in 2012 — after starting out in a smaller shop next door in 1967, Ojeda later moved into the building at 1812 East Sixth Street in 1983. Through the structure itself is not historic and will be cleared for the construction of the new apartment community, Ojeda’s nearly 60-year legacy of cutting hair in East Austin continues in a shop at 3511 East Seventh Street.