When someone says they’re going to build the tallest tower in the state right in your backyard, it’s okay to get a little thirsty for updates. And brother, we are thirsty. To us, even small steps forward are worth celebrating on the mixed-use office, hotel, and residential “supertall” planned to rise a reported 73 floors (and somewhere between 1,022 feet and…
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Remember When Austin’s Hike-and-Bike Trail Didn’t Have Enough Trees?
If you’re an Austin old-timer, what we’re about to tell you sounds insultingly simple — but did you know the city’s famously lush Hike-and-Bike Trail wasn’t always so green? If you’re one of the many people that moved here yesterday, you’d have no idea that much of the current tree cover shading many sections of the trail, particularly in the downtown area,…
Learning to Love the Capitol Complex Project’s Aircraft Carrier-Sized Garage
Unless you happen to live in one of the lovely condo towers in the small northern pocket of downtown between 15th Street and MLK Jr. Boulevard, you might not be fully aware of what’s currently happening behind the fences of the Texas Capitol Complex Project, a multi-phase plan by the Texas Facilities Commission to transform the region of drab state office buildings and parking…
A New Developer Takes the Wheel at 14th and Lavaca in Northwest Downtown
As we so brilliantly predicted a while back after seeing a number of projects here and connecting some pretty obvious dots, the northwestern quadrant of downtown is increasingly looking like the central city’s next frontier for growth — and there’s a new face on the block, with local developer Pearlstone Partners along with their frequent collaborators at New York-based ATCO Properties…
Is Downtown’s Vince Young Steakhouse Building Historic, or Just Really Old?
An application to demolish the 109-year-old former warehouse building currently occupied by the Vince Young Steakhouse in the Vegas-lite heart of downtown’s Convention Center District has run afoul of the city’s Historic Landmark Commission, and the situation presents a philosophical quandary — if a building survives for a century, how do you distinguish its long presence in history from actual historic merit? The…
The Austonian Finally Flips the Lights Back On in Downtown Austin
The Austonian, a fetching 56-story downtown Austin condo tower standing 683 feet at 200 Congress Avenue, enjoyed its status as the city’s tallest building from its completion in 2010 until the arrival of the Independent in 2019 — but for many of those years, the tower’s original crown lighting was switched off. Read More