Image: Google Maps
A 14-story hotel tower containing a Home2 Suites by Hilton is planned on the north edge of downtown Austin near the southeast corner of Guadalupe Street and West Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, according to recent permit applications with the City of Austin. The project by Houston-based management firm PA Hospitality is expected to rise atop a roughly 0.24-acre property at 305 West MLK Jr. Boulevard, currently home to a small strip shopping center.
We feel it’s important to underline the fact that current plans for the 167-foot tower project appear to indicate its scope does not include the extremely abandoned former Pizza Hut restaurant just next door, closer to the corner of MLK and Guadalupe — although we have a hard time believing this adjacent site will remain in its current state for much longer, if only due to the optics of a new hotel rising next door to, and we’re repeating ourselves here, an abandoned Pizza Hut. Stranger things have happened in Austin, of course, but we’re gonna stay optimistic for now.
An elevation drawing of the Home2 building’s northern-facing side. Image: PA Hospitality / City of Austin
It’s only one of several Hilton hotel projects bound for this sector of downtown. There’s the Graduate Hotel — now a Hilton brand, if you didn’t know — planned one block west at 1800 Guadalupe Street, with the former law office building at the site now demolished and site prep presumably moving forward. Then you’ve got the very strange project just one block south of these sites aiming to convert student-oriented apartment building The G at 1715 Guadalupe Street into a Tru by Hilton hotel.
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Downtown’s office market might be in pretty bad shape, but judging by these projects it seems like the hospitality industry is still kicking — and if you’re looking to build a hotel near the University of Texas, so much the better. The Home2, a brand typically known for being by the side of a highway near airports, isn’t the most inspiring project we could envision for this intersection, but the appearance of any new towers in the pipeline is still big news for downtown these days. There’s no timeline for this plan’s construction at the moment, but the permit is currently in review with the city.
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