It's been six years since the announcement of a tower project at 99 Trinity Street in downtown Austin, but landowner WC 1st and Trinity LP has another problem on its hands besides the residential development's seemingly complete lack of progress -- an imminent threat of foreclosure by its lender. Warehouses have occupied the southeast corner of Trinity and East Cesar Chavez ...
history
With ‘The Hatchery,’ East Austin’s RBJ Center Heads Back to the Future
The redevelopment of East Austin's Rebekah Baines Johnson Center, a 1972 housing complex for low-income seniors built on a 17.8-acre tract southeast of downtown, is slowly gaining steam -- and the project's recently-revealed name, "The Hatchery," evokes the curious history of this property even as it creates a new master-planned community for housing Austin's future. After a ...
At a Shuttered East Side Barbershop, Five Floors of Apartments May Fit Fine
A five-story apartment building could soon rise atop the site of a former East Austin barbershop, per recent city filings. Located on a roughly .22-acre assembly that includes 1812 and 1814 East Sixth Street, both addresses are now owned by corporate entities connected with local design and construction firm Novium Group. Site plan proposals filed last week by ...
In 1963, Austin’s Rowdiest Teens Built a ‘Sex Party Tree House’ in North Loop
Let's make one thing clear from the get-go: "Sex Party Tree House" is an extremely funny combination of words, regardless of the context. Since coming across this phrase last year in a 1963 edition of the Austin Statesman, I'll catch myself incessantly repeating it in my head, brain clapping like a trained seal, until all semantic meaning fades away -- Sex Party Tree House, Sex ...
In 1977, the ‘Tree Safeway’ Kept Austin’s Grocery Stores Weird
For more than 40 years, there's been a grocery store at 715 Exposition Boulevard in West Austin, sitting on a 2.6-acre piece of land owned by the University of Texas System. The building opened as a Safeway in 1977, briefly became an AppleTree Market (remember those?) in the late 1980s, and finally a Randalls in 1994. Earlier this year, we learned H-E-B had successfully ...