Erwin Center Demolition Work Could Start Next Month in Downtown Austin

An aerial view of the Erwin Center site on the northeast edge of the downtown Austin area. Image: Google Maps

The reveal last month that the University of Texas is pursuing a $2.5 billion partnership with the MD Anderson Cancer Center to construct a cancer treatment and research hub in downtown Austin was fantastic news for the city’s emerging Innovation District — and bad news for the Frank C. Erwin Jr. Center, the infamous drum-shaped concrete arena set to be demolished in the near future to make room for two hospital towers planned under that partnership. But just how near is that future? Collective news coverage relying on info from the UT System’s Board of Regents indicates the $25 million demolition of the Erwin Center, along with the adjacent Denton A. Cooley Pavilion that’s served as a UT basketball training facility for twenty-odd years, is expected to start next year and wrap up by the end of 2024.

A view of the Erwin Center and Denton Cooley Pavilion in better days. Image: Wikimedia Commons

But that’s frustratingly inexact for those of us who might enjoy watching the twists and turns of this structure’s removal, especially since we already know the demolition is going to be a pretty drawn-out process — imploding the structure in one go would be kinda like pulling the string on a party popper full of asbestos, so the teardown is instead going to require lots of unflashy interior abatement work before we’ll see much demolition happening on the outside shell of the structure. Ol’ Frank is going out with a whimper, not a bang, but recent permit filings with the City of Austin might help us nail down precisely when that whimpering is set to start downtown.

A number of sidewalk closure permits clearing a path for demolition work around the Erwin Center site were filed late last month by construction services firm SpawGlass, and these permits include a start date for demolition next month, on Monday, October 2. That’s not long to wait, but representatives of the university had no idea whether those dates were accurate and were happy to tell me so.

Thankfully David Paden, president of the Austin offices of SpawGlass, was able to shoot me straight. As it stands today, Paden says, demolition on the Denton Cooley Pavilion at the south end of the Erwin Center complex will indeed begin this October, and should wrap up by the end of the year. Interior demolition work will kick off at the Erwin Center along this same timeframe, but exterior demolition won’t be visible on the building until early next year — likely in February.

The drawn-out nature of the demolition process will make it awfully hard to tailgate this thing, but it’s still a notable move forward for the university’s new downtown hospital plan. The Erwin Center’s unsmiling architecture won’t be missed by most, and the only “Old Austin” nostalgia we’ve seen expressed for the building relates to the more memorable stuff that happened inside — concerts, basketball games, and UT students lining up inside the sprawling structure to register for class. Still, if you’d like to try and snag a chunk of the Erwin Center’s concrete or simply document its demise, now you’ve got a timeline. You’re welcome!

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