A 64-story mixed-use tower project designed by world-famous architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill will bring condos, apartments, and a 250-room hotel to the shores of Lady Bird Lake by the end of 2025, according to a new press release from M2 Development Partners, an entity associated with Washington, D.C.-based developer Timothy Morris. According to…
Party Like It’s 1989 With These Vintage Local TV Clips From Austin’s KTBC
First broadcast out of the Driskill Hotel in 1952, Austin’s longtime local television channel KTBC was the city’s first TV station, holding down channel number seven and owned for many years by none other than Texas royalty Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. The station, primarily a CBS affiliate until its switch to Fox in 1995, is an essential background element of the…
At Rosewood Courts, a Milestone of Housing History Imagines an Upgrade
Though its historic significance doesn’t receive due attention outside the city, the Rosewood Courts public housing complex in East Austin is the first federal housing project in the nation built for African Americans. Funded by the United States Housing Authority of the New Deal thanks to the famously tireless politicking of then-Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson and completed in 1939, the…
At 701 Rio, Downtown’s Latest Office Addition Tops Out in a Changed World
First announced in 2018 and breaking ground in January 2020 right before everything went sideways, the office development at 701 Rio Grande Street celebrates its official “topping out” today. We’re not sure whether its developers Diana Zuniga and Jason Berkowitz, pursuing the project under the name B&Z Development in partnership with global investment management firm Barings, are bothering with the…
Affordable Housing Unlocks Surprising New Heights at Cambrian East Riverside
Despite the explosive variety of multifamily housing development along East Riverside Drive in Southeast Austin, one thing is almost always the same — the buildings are six floors tall at most, the ubiquitous wood-framed apartment configuration known in cities all over the country as a one-plus-five. (You’ll notice the first image on the Wikipedia entry for this building style literally…
A Bigger H-E-B Won’t Fix Hancock Center, but It’s Not a Bad Start
We usually have a good time ragging on the outdated urban planning principles of the later 20th century — urban renewal, highways everywhere, other weirdness — so it’s a little embarrassing to admit that Hancock Center, the 34-acre strip mall you know and love(?) at East 41st and Red River Streets, was a more pleasantly-designed environment for human beings between its…