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 ...
walkability
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 ...
Should Austin Bring Its ‘Dillo Shuttle Back From the Dead?
For many years, the rickety brown and green ‘Dillo buses were a familiar sight around downtown Austin. A circulator shuttle operated on our central streets in the 1970s even before the formation of Capital Metro, Austin’s modern-day public transit agency, but the service wasn't fully expanded and dubbed the "Armadillo Express" until 1984. These trolley ...
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 ...