Austin’s most underrated downtown green space is almost certainly Duncan Park, located along Shoal Creek at West Ninth Street just east of North Lamar Boulevard. Despite its lack of prominence due to the location along downtown’s fuzzy western boundary, with development trends in the surrounding area we’re pretty bullish on Duncan Park becoming a more prominent community…
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Downtown Austin’s Lost Fourth Square Could Serve the Public Once Again
When Edwin Waller drafted the original plan for the City of Austin in 1839, he designated four blocks in the plan’s grid as public squares. Three of those four blocks still exist in the modern-day downtown — Wooldridge Square, Republic Square, and Brush Square. But one block, known as Hamilton Square, is missing. Bound by Ninth, Tenth,…
Demolition Pending for Downtown Austin’s Former Brick Oven Pizza Site
After roughly 11 years of hemming and hawing, it looks like the 27-story hotel tower long prophesied at the northeast corner of 12th and Red River Streets in downtown Austin is taking at least a baby step into the real world. A demolition permit for the approximately 5,900-square-foot building dating back to the late 1940s currently occupying the corner at…
Austin’s Single-Family Zoning Reform Heads for Public Hearing
Changes to Austin’s zoning code introduced by City Council this summer are headed for a number of public hearings over the next few months — and although we believe these amendments reforming the city’s widespread single-family zoning largely responsible for our local housing affordability crisis are an inspiring step in the right direction, we’re also expecting to see a lot of homeowner opposition to these and other upcoming changes…
Austin’s Weirdest Tower Is Officially Under Construction at La Vista de Lopez
“Keep Austin Weird” isn’t a great slogan, since it puts pressure on people who live here to act like they’re extraordinarily quirky and different from people in other cities — and that’s usually much more annoying than weird. But every now and then, Austin sees an authentically very weird thing worth celebrating, and this is…
The Frio Apartments Preparing to Rise Against a Widening I-35
The planned redevelopment of the former Concordia University campus , a 22-acre site located just west of I-35 in the Hancock neighborhood of Central Austin, has taken 16 years to grow to its current crop of apartment, office, and retail buildings. That’s a bit longer than we expected when the city approved the Planned Unit Development (PUD) zoning for extra density at the…