Looking at an aerial view of the State Capitol Complex, with the 1301 Lavaca Street site circled in red. They’re close to each other! Image: Bing Maps
Dallas-based tax services company Ryan LLC and local lobbying firm McWillams appear to be developing a tower of sorts at the corner of 13th and Lavaca Streets in downtown Austin, a location situated about as close to the State Capitol Complex as you can get before actually being there. This is at least the case presented by recent city documents concerning plans for an 120-foot building containing eight floors and a rooftop terrace at 1301 Lavaca Street, the former home of downtown bar Charlie’s, which closed in 2011 — the site’s now only occupied by a vacant lot.
1301 Lavaca Street in 2009 (top) and 2019 (bottom). Image: Google Maps
The bar building itself didn’t actually come down until about a year ago, but soon after it closed, the roughly 0.17-acre property was purchased by an entity associated with Ryan LLC and its founder and CEO G. Brint Ryan. Development plans stayed quiet until this year, but a new city site plan for the property filed by its owners back in August provides us with a look at the small, slightly strange tower imagined here, its design by local architecture outfit Page:
Northern and southern-facing views of the 1301 Lavaca tower. Images: Ryan LLC / Page / City of Austin
Eastern and western-facing views of the 1301 Lavaca tower. Images: Ryan LLC / Page / City of Austin
Unlike a lot of architectural illustrations, these views of the future building actually include the exterior signage for the companies that will presumably occupy at least some of it: Ryan LLC and McWilliams. Both companies have office space elsewhere downtown at the moment — McWilliams actually currently operates out of the building at 1220 Colorado Street, literally one block south of the 1301 Lavaca Street site, making for an easy move. This new tower would likely provide a snazzy new headquarters for both firms.
The current McWilliams office space is just south of the 1301 Lavaca Street property.
(Per the McWilliams site, head honcho Andrea McWilliams currently serves on the PAC Board of Ryan LLC, and the two outfits seem very friendly.)
But what really makes this building interesting is the usage described in the site plan: “Offices with residences.” We thought at first that this would indicate some kind of office/hotel hybrid, in keeping with CEO Ryan’s previous work in the hospitality industry, but once we got our hands on the physical plans we realized it’s stranger than that — the building described here contains a single 6,600-square-foot residential unit, occupying the entire top eighth floor with a rooftop terrace above. In other words, Ryan LLC appears to be developing potentially the coolest penthouse downtown, with roughly 39,000 square feet of office space below as a bonus.
On the left, tables describing various uses at the 1301 Lavaca project. On the right, a site plan of the project’s ground floor — we’re including this for the folks that like this sort of thing, and we know you’re out there! Images: Ryan LLC / Page / City of Austin
But wait, there’s more! These plans also indicate that the building will contain no on-site parking, something you don’t see very often in an office project for obvious reasons. It’s highly possible the occupants will come to an agreement with surrounding parking structures to house their workers, but there’s no additional information provided at this time. Considering the building’s limited height based on the site’s proximity to the Capitol, getting rid of parking allows the structure to maximize its use of space without spending the extra dough to dig its garage below grade, so it kinda makes sense. Kinda.
Between its parking situation and the single, enormous residence upstairs, this building is a genuine mystery unlike any other downtown project at the moment, and a mystery it shall remain until representatives of either Ryan LLC or McWilliams are willing to comment on its many quirks (for now, they aren’t biting). These plans state that the building is at a 50 percent design stage, so we could see some changes before it breaks ground. Still, after sitting vacant for eight years it’s nice to see something going on at this corner, especially something kind of weird. Though we can think of a few ways a lobbying firm might want to use it, the massive penthouse is certainly not typical — but as established fans of this kind of thing, we’ll take all we can get.
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