In 2010, an architectural report prepared for Austin's Parks and Recreation Department declared the facility housing the city's Dougherty Arts Center had aged beyond its useful life -- in fact, the much-loved community theater and gallery space near Butler Park at 1110 Barton Springs Road was "beyond repair," according to the parks department's own summary of the study's ...
streetscapes
Don’t You Dare Park Here
After six-ish years working in urban planning and design, I can confidently say that nothing gets people more riled up than parking -- not even traffic compares. This is especially true in Austin, as we frequently hash out the merits of parking-centric topics like parking minimums, parking podiums, event parking, and residential parking permits. The city's Residential Permit ...
Getting to Know 44 East Avenue, Raising the Roof in the Rainey Street District
Although our first good look at the Block 185 office tower was obviously the hottest item at last week's meeting of the City of Austin's Design Commission, another topic of interest showed up on the agenda -- 44 East Avenue, a downtown Austin condo project planned atop a roughly .68-acre plot in the Rainey Street District by Vancouver real estate development outfit Intracorp, ...
Google’s New Home at Block 185 is Downtown Austin’s Next Signature Tower
Block 185 is an all-star tower. This 35-floor office building by national developer Trammell Crow Company, which broke ground last month in downtown Austin, is already leased in full by tech juggernaut Google, and features a striking sail-like design courtesy of "starchitecture" outfit Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects. For such a stacked project, it's kind of ...
Austin Can’t Build Its Way Out of Traffic
If you live in Austin, chances are you drive a car to get most places you need to go. And chances are at least some of the time, you sit in traffic and get pretty frustrated about that. And chances are, you don’t necessarily want more of our city’s precious natural beauty to be paved over, but that’s just what we have to do to alleviate this traffic that’s grown so awful, ...