The stretch of Sixth Street running east of Congress Avenue in downtown Austin has enjoyed many colorful lives over the 180-odd years since the city’s founding — periods of boom and bust motivated by surrounding growth and changing transportation systems have taken this street from an enclave of minority-friendly immigrant-owned retail stores all the way to the…
city life
Google’s Future Home at Block 185 Has Already Transformed Austin’s Skyline
Block 185, the downtown Austin office tower project best known as the future home of Google, has made significant progress since its groundbreaking back in the downright prehistoric era of 2019 — and though it hasn’t reached its full height of 594 feet just yet, the 35-floor building’s ever-growing prominence on the downtown skyline is becoming increasingly difficult to…
Parkside Brings Mueller Its First Real-Deal Density-Loving Condo Community
Approximately 17 years into its transformation from an Austin airport to a master-planned neighborhood, you might say Mueller is running out of surprises — most of its sprawling 711 acres are now built out on behalf of its master developers at Catellus. We’re excited to see how an expected future apartment project fits around the iconic former Mueller Airport’s…
Demolition Finally Kicks Off at Symphony Square in Downtown Austin
More than two years after the first appearance of plans for a 31-story mixed-use tower development surrounding the Symphony Square historic site in downtown Austin, demolition has finally arrived at the project’s approximately 1.7-acre land assembly — never mind that we still haven’t actually seen a rendering of the tower from its developer Greystar, it’s still a good sign of progress on will…
When Calcasieu Lumber Ruled Austin’s Wood Game, We Never Ran Low on Logs
Though you’ll find a lot more steel and concrete than wood these days in downtown’s newest towers, you might have heard something lately about the role of lumber prices in Austin’s “extraordinary” housing market, currently commanding the highest sales over asking price for new homes of any major city in the nation — in fact, it’s estimated that rising costs of lumber across the country…
South Congress Could Relax Its Obnoxious Residential Parking Rules
Nobody wants to talk about parking until they specifically can’t find any, and by now you might know our thoughts on the subject. There’s too much of it in the wrong places, it shouldn’t be free, and it’s bad for cities and architecture — not to mention the planet, but we’ll stay local — when our entire built environment prioritizes the movement…