Here’s a New View of Block 32, Building a Double Dose of Towers Downtown

Image: Rhode Partners / Manifold Real Estate

The Block 32 project proposed by local developer Manifold Real Estate could bring a pair of residential towers to a half-block site one block away from the Austin Convention Center at the corner of East Third and San Jacinto Streets downtown — and let’s be real, after the last bit of news on the project dropped last summer, we weren’t sure we’d ever hear about this plan again. It’s not that Manifold lacks the juice, but the general state of the real estate market this year has people in the biz throwing around terms like “interest rates” and nodding solemnly. We haven’t narrowed down the list just yet, but there’s a good chance that several of the tower projects among the slew announced since 2020 will remain vaporware in perpetuity.

But the saving grace of the Block 32 project is that it’s fully residential, an asset class that isn’t suffering quite as hard as the office world at the moment — and to our surprise, the plan has resurfaced in a big way, now on the agenda for next week’s Design Commission meeting seeking a ruling of compliance with the design requirements of the Downtown Density Bonus Program.

Image: Rhode Partners / Manifold Real Estate

The project would raise two adjacent towers across two planned phases of construction. Tower 1, located on the eastern half of the property near Trinity Street, would reach 41 floors and contain 363 apartments alongside nearly 4,000 square feet of ground-level retail space and eight levels of above-grade parking in a podium structure. Tower 2 would rise as part of a second phase near the corner of East Third and San Jacinto Streets at the western half of the block, reaching 55 floors and containing another 363 apartments, along with a 216-room hotel, about 2,200 square feet of additional retail space, and another eight-floor parking podium.

Image: Rhode Partners / Manifold Real Estate

These details are roughly comparable to what we dug up about the project last year, but the renderings and other info seen here, included with the presentation of the plan to the Design Commission scheduled for next week by its architects at local studio Rhode Partners, give us a better idea of what we’re looking at.

Image: Rhode Partners / Manifold Real Estate

Recent projects by this firm tend to have a really recognizable design language, with a consistent sense of materiality and form you can identify between different buildings like the Independent, the Linden, and student housing projects in West Campus like the Villas on Rio and the Muze — looking at these renderings for Block 32, we think the articulation of the windows, the perforated metal screening of the parking structure, and the chamfering breaking up the mass of the facade are dead ringers for Rhode.

Image: Rhode Partners / Manifold Real Estate

Although we won’t hear further details on the project’s design until next week’s meeting, we’re just kind of pleasantly surprised to see this plan moving forward at all. On top of its whopping potential total of 726 new downtown residences, the project is set to pay $7,214,460 into the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund thanks to the requirements of the Downtown Density Bonus Program — if only we could adjust that program to stop incentivizing above-ground parking podiums, we’d really be cooking!