The long saga of decommissioning East Austin’s controversial Holly Street Power Plant shifts into a new gear this month, only a short 14 years after the facility’s 2007 closure. The plant generated electricity for 47 years at the eastern shore of Lady Bird Lake in the Holly neighborhood, but ceased operations after years of protest by nearby residents over its environmental…
city life
This Downtown Austin Tower Isn’t Real, but We Like It Anyway
One thing you’ll notice reading this site is that we like the tower plans that never get built almost as much as the ones that do. Each unrealized concept for downtown Austin represents a sort of self-contained alternate universe for the direction of the city’s skyline, especially some of the more ambitious and far-fetched designs…
To Build a Better East Sixth Street, Consider the Night Market
A recent push by the City of Austin to study public safety improvements for downtown’s East Sixth Street entertainment district following a string of shootings already has lots of ideas on the table — including a wider variety of cultural activities on the street, rezoning for additional commercial or even residential development, and encouraging more diverse uses for the area’s many historic storefronts beyond the near-identical string of…
West Sixth and Rio Grande’s Getting Taller, but Watch That View Corridor!
After finding out last year that San Antonio-based developer Kairoi Residential had purchased the quarter-block at the southwest corner of West Sixth and Rio Grande Street now occupied by the goofily-named bar Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Icehouse (haha, get it?) at 701 West Sixth Street, we knew an apartment tower development of some kind was in the cards —…
What’s Austin’s ‘Evilest’ Building?
As fans of buildings everywhere, it stands to reason that we also enjoy the more sinister-looking buildings discussed on the famous r/EvilBuildings subreddit, which catalogues structures that happen to look particularly like the hangout of a supervillain, crooked sci-fi megacorporation, or otherwise, well, evil. Brutalism, red lighting, and other severe architectural flourishes generally score the most upvotes,…
Hundreds of Apartments Headed for South Lamar’s ‘Chicken Wing’
Do you remember the “friendly whale” apartment project now leasing at Aura on Lamar, built atop a uniquely curved (downright whale-shaped) tract of land at the corner of West Koenig Lane and North Lamar Boulevard? The development was made possible by the sale of the property to the developer from the Texas Department of Transportation, a state…