Remember when there weren't any major Austin condo or office towers west of Guadalupe Street in downtown? It's kind of quaint to look back on now -- I'm not old, but I'm old enough to remember the opposition to the 7Rio condo tower proposal at Seventh and Rio Grande Streets back around 2007, which eventually lost about half its height and became the SEVEN Apartments. Back ...
placemaking
Congress Avenue’s Pocket Patio Transformation, Mapped
The annual PARK(ing) Day event creates public space in downtown Austin by converting, for a day, many of Congress Avenue's street parking spaces into temporary parklets. It's a fun time, but perhaps more importantly, the event serves as a reminder of how much space we've sacrificed to parking in the public realm of our most famous street -- space that, in many cases, can be ...
CodeNEXT Is Dead, Long Live CodeNEXT!
CodeNEXT, Austin's long-awaited rejiggering of the land development code, is dead. Mayor Steve Adler was the first politician to acknowledge the reality that "something has gone horribly wrong" and the project had been "poisoned" by "misinformation, hyperbole, fearmongering, and divisive rhetoric." The news cycle moved from breaking news to roundups and ...
Downtown’s Eight-Block Transformation Kicks Off at Capitol Complex
Unlike a lot of downtown Austin developments that kick around in a state of limbo for what feels like a million years before turning dirt, the Texas Facilities Commission isn't screwing around. Commission documents from earlier this month indicate that construction on the underground parking garage component of the Capitol Complex Master Plan's Texas Mall project will begin by ...
Five Takeaways From the Shoal Creek Conservancy’s New Trail Plan
Shoal Creek, flowing roughly 11 miles from its headwaters north of Highway 183 to Lady Bird Lake, is one of the two major creeks running through downtown Austin. That fact alone makes it relevant to any conversation about the peaceful coexistence of the natural and built environments in the urban core, but it doesn't seem to grab the same headlines as its eastern twin Waller ...