Here’s Our First Look at the Apartment Tower Headed for Fifth and Red River

Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

The 37-floor downtown Austin apartment tower planned for the corner of East Fifth and Red River Streets by local real estate developer Stonelake Capital Partners heads to the City of Austin’s Design Commission for a review of its density bonus application on Monday next week — but since we try our best to stay on the ball around here for the sake of our beloved readers, we’ve got an early look at the tower for you, which at the moment is going by the working name 5th + Red River.

Remember, this is the project redeveloping the former site of longtime Italian restaurant Carmelo’s at 504 East Fifth Street, which closed in 2017 with plans for a tower here floundering through multiple developers and several unused designs before Stonelake ultimately took the wheel. Got it? Here we go:

A view of the tower from the north. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

A view of the tower and its preserved historic neighbor from East Fifth Street. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

A closer look at the preserved and restored Depot Hotel / Carmelo’s building at the site. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

The old Carmelo’s building — originally built as a boarding house in 1872 and known on its historical marker as the Old Depot Hotel — will be restored with the help of local preservation firm O’Connell Architecture for use as a retail space adjacent to the new tower, with the new construction mostly rising from the area now occupied by the site’s parking lot. It’s nearly an ideal scenario for infill development, preserving a historic downtown structure while bringing 242 new residences to market.

The outdoor plaza space planned between the new tower and the preserved historic building. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

A view of the tower from near I-35, showing its avoidance of the CVC over a corner of the site. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

A view of the tower at the corner of East Fifth and Red River Streets. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

Along with the presence of a historic building on the property, another constraint on the tower’s design is the site’s partial obstruction by a Capitol View Corridor, which is why the building’s got such an angular look courtesy of its architects at Gensler Austin — and in this case, the tower’s triangular footprint makes for a more dynamic appearance from all angles, its facade bringing a number of curves alongside warm and cool contrasting materials for an organic style we think fits its site and historic neighbor perfectly, looking particularly striking from the western elevation:

The western elevation of the tower, looking east down Fifth Street. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

Another view of the tower’s corner entrance at East Fifth and Red River Streets. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

With approximately 70 percent of its ground level accessible to the public, the landscape design of the tower’s outdoor spaces by well-known local studio dwg. is particularly important for the project’s amenity levels, which include the four retail spaces and public plaza on the ground floor along with two additional amenity levels for the building’s residential tenants — one on the sixth floor atop the tower’s four-level parking structure, the other a rooftop pool deck at level 37. You might catch that the angles of the streetscape’s new pavers and other landscaping features reflect the look of the tower, which is the kind of thing that makes you feel smart to notice.

A ground-level plan for the tower showing its landscape improvements planned under the city’s Great Streets program, one of the gatekeeper requirements for the tower’s inclusion in the Downtown Density Bonus Program. Image: Stonelake Capital Partners

Though its dynamic design can’t fully hide the fact that the building sits on top of an above-ground parking podium, this tower does a better job than most with its garage component — the above-ground spaces only take up four levels, with roughly 50 percent of its overall parking extending another four levels underground. Combined with the continued presence of the repurposed historic hotel structure and the preservation of the site’s large heritage oak tree, this project’s ground-level aesthetics aren’t quite as dominated by the monolith of a giant above-ground parking podium the way we’ve seen in some other projects lately. Baby steps, people.