This morning, the Texas Facilities Commission celebrated the groundbreaking for Phase II of its Capitol Complex Project, the next step of a planning effort by the State of Texas to reshape its considerable land holdings north of the Capitol grounds with additional office space for state employees, a central pedestrian plaza, and thousands of underground parking spaces replacing…
historic preservation
South Central Waterfront Tower Plan Could Build Austin an Observation Deck
Last month, we dug into the potential rezoning of the Extended Stay America hotel at 507 South First Street in Austin’s growing South Central Waterfront district, with plans describing a residential tower at this site rising up to 490 feet. This month, an update to that rezoning application filed by local land use firm Armbrust & Brown on behalf of the…
Residential Plan Seeks a Sweet 90 Feet on East Seventh Street
A rezoning case on the agenda for next week’s City Council meeting could bring extra height to an East Austin apartment project planned near downtown — and we think that means something! Scheduled for a public hearing at Council’s upcoming meeting on April 20, the case concerns a 0.65-acre assembly of adjacent properties at 1007 and 1021…
The Capitol Complex Clears a Corner at 15th and Lavaca in Downtown Austin
If you’ve strolled around downtown in the last few days and you’ve got a couple of brain cells left to rub together, you might have noticed a bit of demolition currently underway at West 15th and Lavaca Streets, clearing the existing buildings and a big parking lot from the state-owned block at the northeast corner of this…
Raise a Glass to Austin’s Planned Abolition of Bar Parking Mandates
Minimum parking requirements are bad for cities. Once upon a time you’d risk getting run out of town for saying this in public, but we’ve seen an increasing awareness over the last decade of these and other invisible rules shaping how places like Austin grow, and the results aren’t always great — ask yourself, why does every new tower downtown have a…
More Than 2,000 Homes Could Replace This Massive East Austin Industrial Site
An approximately 71-acre industrial site east of Highway 183 near the Colorado River could redevelop as a mixed-use project with 2,219 new residences, according to a rezoning application filed with the city this week by law firm Armbrust & Brown on behalf of the land’s owners at Texas Materials Group, which currently operates concrete and asphalt manufacturing…