The St. Elmo region of South Austin has been the “next big thing” for nearly a decade. Although the ongoing infusion of residential and creative retail uses into this warehouse-heavy industrial district still has plenty of potential, the whole enterprise got a big bucket of cold water to the face earlier this month with the announcement that the long-awaited St. Elmo Public Market plan — an adaptive reuse project…
streetscapes
Hundreds of Apartments Replacing a Big Ol’ Drive-Thru Bank on Burnet Road
An apartment project set to bring approximately 300 new residences to a drive-thru bank and adjacent parking lot of an office building on Burnet Road is preparing to take its first steps in the Allandale neighborhood of North Central Austin, with the site plan for the development at 7618 Burnet Road now approved by the city and…
Austin’s ‘Living Streets’ Could Make Your Neighborhood Walkable Again
As a city, the hardest part about temporarily closing some of your streets to traffic and turning them into pedestrian walkways is that people start liking them too much. Even after you open the streets back up, you’ve permanently recontextualized these spaces for thousands of nearby residents by demonstrating how much of their public realm is ceded to the needs of cars,…
Terra Office Tower Project Raising the Bar for Design at the Domain
A 21-story office project with design work from one of the city’s most well-known architecture firms could bring a signature tower to the master-planned Domain Northside shopping center in North Austin, a part of town that could use more iconic tower designs as its increasing heights seek the status of Austin’s “second downtown.” Renderings revealed this week for the…
Who Was the ‘Duncan’ of Downtown Austin’s Duncan Park?
Austin’s most underrated downtown green space is almost certainly Duncan Park, located along Shoal Creek at West Ninth Street just east of North Lamar Boulevard. Despite its lack of prominence due to the location along downtown’s fuzzy western boundary, with development trends in the surrounding area we’re pretty bullish on Duncan Park becoming a more prominent community…
Downtown Austin’s Lost Fourth Square Could Serve the Public Once Again
When Edwin Waller drafted the original plan for the City of Austin in 1839, he designated four blocks in the plan’s grid as public squares. Three of those four blocks still exist in the modern-day downtown — Wooldridge Square, Republic Square, and Brush Square. But one block, known as Hamilton Square, is missing. Bound by Ninth, Tenth,…