Remember the Hotel ZaZa and Gables Republic Square project at 401 Guadalupe Street? First announced nearly seven years ago, the timeline of this 24-story hotel and apartment project one block east from Republic Square Park has been fairly long by Austin standards, but we're expecting its opening relatively soon. Representatives of the project have slyly told us it's ...
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At Holly Point, Long-Awaited Upgrades Head for an East Austin Park
The long-discussed plan for the improvement of East Austin's enormous tracts of parkland on the north shores of Lady Bird Lake near the former Holly Power Plant is finally taking its first small steps, nearly a decade after City Council approved the development of a vision for upgrading the area in 2009. Generally referred to as Holly Shores but technically containing ...
After 15 Years of Mueller, Its Iconic Control Tower Has Never Looked Better
It was 2007 when I tried breaking into the defunct control tower at Austin's former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport -- you can call that "urban exploration" or "criminal trespassing" at your discretion, though at the age of 15 there's admittedly not much distance between the two. My failed attempt arrived long after the site ceased its final civil aviation operations almost ...
At Downtown Austin’s Empty Post Office, the Wait Is Longer Than Usual
Though Austin is still a fairly young city in terms of its central growth, our portfolio of full downtown city blocks suitable for tower development gets smaller every year. With limits imposed upon many such tracts by Capitol View Corridors, the presence of historic buildings, or multiple property owners requiring lengthy and complex land assemblies by any aspiring developer, ...
On Island Time at WatersMark, the Weirdest Austin Condo Tower Never Built
Explosive growth, which would eventually come to define Austin despite storied resistance from its slacker set, really arrived at the dawn of the 1980s. That decade saw the development of a dozen buildings over 15 floors in height in the downtown area alone, and though Austin didn't experience the stereotypical excess of the era compared to either Dallas or "Dallas," the ...
