Here’s a Shiny New View of the Travis Apartment Tower Bound for Rainey

A detail from a larger image of the Travis phase one tower, showing the building’s connection to an improved Waller Creek. That’s the Hotel Van Zandt on the left, by the way — it’s such a handsome building, isn’t it? Image GDA Architects

As we’re prone to doing on this website, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the new heights the Travis might soon bring to the west edge of the Rainey Street District in downtown Austin. The project hopes to eventually raise two towers atop the 2.3-acre former condo site at 80 Red River Street across two phases of development — the first phase tower rising 50 floors to contain 414 apartment units; and the second tower going even taller at 60 floors with a reported 220 condos and a 200-room hotel.

A rendering showing the Travis project’s phase one tower from over Lady Bird Lake, looking towards the east from this perspective. Sharp-eyed readers will notice this latest version of the rendering has some slight cosmetic changes from the last time we saw it. Also, where’s the Fairmont’s spire here? Click for a larger view. Image: GDA Architects

Not much has changed since the last time we checked out the plan, but judging by some project-related permit filings showing up with the city earlier this month, developers Genesis Real Estate Group are still working towards a groundbreaking — and now we’ve got a more detailed set of renderings for the full architecture of the phase one tower than we’ve seen before, thanks to its designers at GDA Architects:

Day and night views of the Travis project’s first phase tower, which would rise 50 stories and contain a reported 414 apartment units. From this perspective, we’re looking sort of southeast towards the tower, with Waller Creek in the foreground — the architects say these renderings include some of the expected improvements to the creek as part of the Waterloo Greenway project, including a pedestrian bridge and other nice creek things. Click for a larger view. Image: GDA Architects

The new images above reflect some of the changes the developers made to the tower’s street-level design in order to better comply with Austin’s Urban Design Guidelines and receive its recommendation for a density bonus — features like trail connections to Waller Creek and some sort of cafe retail space with outdoor seating make the whole joint a lot more friendly than before, so in this case we owe the folks on the city’s Design Commission one for constructive criticism. 

Image: GDA Architects

Besides those grand vertical day-and-night shots of the towers up there, which are obviously worth showing off, there’s not much else to report progress-wise here besides the ongoing development filings that imply this project’s still moving forward in some capacity. Genesis, which hasn’t responded to inquiries regarding construction timelines, admittedly blew past its original groundbreaking date of “sometime in 2019,” but since the site’s already cleared of its previous condo occupant it wouldn’t take too long to get this thing going. You’ll find out when we find out.

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