An aerial view of the Lamar Business Park site at the southeast corner of North Lamar Boulevard and West Koenig Lane. From this perspective, you can just barely see the former home of the Sex Party Tree House. Image: Link Logistics
The planned redevelopment of a nearly 14-acre shopping center and business park at the edge of the North Loop neighborhood in Central Austin could bring more than 1,000 new apartment residences near the southeast corner of North Lamar Boulevard and West Koenig Lane, according to a rezoning application now pending with the city. The Lamar Business Park, located at 5555 North Lamar Boulevard, is best known for its pair of large retail spaces near the corner currently containing a Goodwill thrift shop and the city’s biggest used bookstore at Half Price Books, but the center also includes more than nine acres of small offices and other commercial spaces in a multi-building complex located behind these two tenants.
Link Logistics, a subsidiary of the world’s largest commercial real estate investment firm Blackstone, purchased the 13.8-acre complex in 2022. The firm is now seeking a rezoning for the rear half of the site, which would allow the entire property to redevelop under the city’s vertical mixed-use zoning program to a maximum height of 60 feet with a 10 percent affordability requirement for any residential project. A traffic impact analysis (TIA) worksheet submitted with the rezoning application now in review with the city describes a planned redevelopment for the Lamar Business Park site containing 1,070 apartments and 45,000 square feet of retail space.
An aerial view of the Lamar Business Park site expected to redevelop. For the record, that “Friendly Whale” apartment complex directly to the north of the site is owned by other people, but its construction was a pretty good sign of what might happen to this property as the area densifies. Image: Google Maps / James Rambin
It’s unknown at the moment whether this planned redevelopment of the site will include a demolition of the current Goodwill and Half Price Books stores, but the TIA document includes this acreage, and we would honestly be pretty surprised if it didn’t — the whole complex, which replaced the 1940s-era Chief Drive-In theater, dates back to the mid-1970s. Any new development here would likely take advantage of the center’s street frontage on North Lamar Boulevard, which is currently occupied by a large surface parking lot alongside a drive-thru ATM and a Kentucky Fried Chicken so cruddy that I never went there despite living only one block away from 2017 to 2018.
True scholars of the North Loop neighborhood will be happy to learn that the adjacent commercial tract containing gems like Titaya’s Thai Cuisine and the city’s greatest bagel shop at Nervous Charlie’s is seemingly uninvolved with this plan, owned by local developer Peter Barlin and not obviously connected to Link Logistics or Blackstone. While details are scarce regarding exactly what’s planned for the Lamar Business Park, the rezoning application for the site is expected to appear before the city’s Planning Commission in the near future, so we’ll probably get a better understanding of the pending project’s scope before too long. Anyway, you ought to go knock around at Half Price Books for a while, buy some old records or something — just in case.
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