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…
historic preservation
Downtown’s Avenue Lofts Condos Hit the Market, With Redevelopment in Mind
The Avenue Lofts, a 38-unit downtown Austin condo community at 410 East Fifth Street, is being marketed for sale. According to a listing from commercial real estate investors CBRE, the owner’s association of the building has retained the firm as the property’s exclusive marketing agent, with a possible major tower redevelopment of the 0.81-acre property highlighted in marketing materials…
A Hidden Railroad Relic Steams Toward Historic Status in Downtown Austin
In the shadow of the Independent, the downtown Austin condo tower taller than any other residential structure west of the Mississippi, you’ll find an unlikely relic of an unrecognizable past — the Third Street Railroad Trestle, an overgrown piece of vestigial infrastructure removed from the current context of its urban surroundings by nearly a century. Built over…
Demolition Underway at Hanover Brazos Street Tower Site in Downtown Austin
Since many of you are still working from home, we’d be remiss not to inform you of the latest development in Austin’s ongoing race to the first downtown tower groundbreaking of 2021 — demolition is underway even as we speak at the southeast corner of East Third and Brazos Streets, the future site of the 45-floor Hanover Brazos Street tower project by apartment…
The Forgotten Midcentury Dream of Gondolas Over Lake Austin
Austin’s best-known architectural duo Fehr & Granger are remembered locally for the classic midcentury designs they brought to the city, with iconic buildings like the whimsical control tower and terminal of the former Mueller Airport. But this famed partnership of modernists also worked on a few projects that didn’t pan out, and we often find that unbuilt plans contain some of the…
Shaping the Future of Austin’s Greatest Park With the Zilker Vision Plan
More than a century after Andrew Jackson Zilker donated approximately 350 acres of land to the City of Austin to create what would eventually become the city’s favorite metropolitan park, we find ourselves in an embarrassing predicament — Zilker Park has never had a master plan! Well, there have of course been plans over the years, but not…