The one-acre former headquarters of the Texas Municipal Retirement System, a state pension program providing retirement and disability benefits to municipal employees in hundreds of Texas cities, could soon be up for grabs. The program relocated its operations to a new office building at the recently-opened Grove development in Central Austin late last year, leaving the future of its old office space…
architecture
Two East Austin Landmarks Headed for the National Register of Historic Places
Federal historic recognition is pending for two properties located roughly a mile apart in East Austin after the approval of nominations by the Texas Historical Commission’s State Board of Review earlier this month. The respective sites, both notable landmarks in the history of the region’s Mexican American community, are Parque Zaragoza at 2608 Gonzales Street in the…
The Waterloo Greenway’s Next Phase Begins Later This Year on Waller Creek
Now that Austin’s had a few months to get familiar with the reopened Waterloo Park, you might wonder what’s next for the Waterloo Greenway conservancy, since the nonprofit’s plans for transforming the rest of Waller Creek into a 35-acre linear park running 1.5 miles from 15th Street to Lady Bird Lake on the eastern edge of downtown…
In 2022, It’s Time for Austin To End Parking Minimums Citywide
Every day in Austin, an invisible exchange takes place beneath your feet — the ceding of valuable land to vast amounts of free parking, which you pay for all the time even if you never use it. Parking takes up space, space costs money, and that cost along with the cost of constructing the parking in the first…
Several New Towers Could Sprout Across Downtown Austin This Spring
The temperature outside is currently cold and dropping, but there’s a new day on the horizon — according to recent city permits and other development activity, we’ll see multiple downtown Austin condo, apartment, and office towers sprout in the coming months like the first flowers of spring. It’s clear that 2022 represents a big year…
Where Does Austin’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Network Really Suck?
If you’re looking to get around Austin without a car for business or pleasure, you’ll notice a relative lack of sidewalks pretty fast once you venture outside of downtown — it’s a longstanding issue, with the city estimating in 2019 that our pedestrian network was roughly only half connected, though we’ve added quite a lot since the approval of a new sidewalk…