A zoning change approved by the City of Austin’s Planning Commission this week will allow the Amaya family behind local Tex-Mex institution Amaya’s Taco Village to redevelop their 1.2-acre restaurant site at the far edge of the North Loop neighborhood near the southwest corner of I-35 and Highway 290, with plans for a five-story mixed-use building containing an estimated 80…
architecture
64 Months Seems Like Long Enough to Build the Tallest Tower in Texas, Right?
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…
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…