Take a Look at the 45-Story Apartment Tower Headed for Fifth and Lavaca

Over the last six months or so, we’ve seen a steady stream of progress on a tower plan by apartment developers the Hanover Company at the southwest corner of Fifth and Lavaca Streets in downtown Austin. Still, until now we weren’t certain of the building’s height or appearance — enter some new city site plan filings that give us a reasonable impression of both:

As you can see, we’re looking at a 45-story, 504-foot tower, ready to rise on a site technically comprising three addresses — 301, 303, and 305 West Fifth Street — all of which are unencumbered by Capitol View Corridors or other constraints, though the building will need to seek approval from the Downtown Density Bonus Program to build to its desired floor-area ratio.

The building’s architect, national firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) previously designed Hanover’s nearby Northshore development — perhaps not downtown’s signature building, but one of the nicer towers on that side of town, in our opinion.

The prospective tower’s layout, as seen in the plans above, includes restaurant space on the ground floor along with a 10-story parking podium, then apartments up to the 43rd floor — the 44th and 45th floors are reserved for resident amenity space. Based on the footprint seen in these latest plans, along with the stated height of 504 feet, we’ve put together a rough massing that shows how this tower would look in the downtown skyline — it’s not exact, obviously, but the height should be approximately correct:

One of the most curious elements of following this plan has been the uncertain future of the Roosevelt Room, the cocktail bar directly to the west of the site. If the new tower is developed to the specifications of the current plans we have, the Roosevelt Room’s two-story structure will find itself slightly awkwardly sandwiched between Hanover’s 45-story tower and the 12-story Plaza Lofts building at the corner of Fifth and Guadalupe Streets.

Word on the street is that Hanover initially planned to purchase the property and develop the tower on top of it in some fashion, but the deal must have fallen through — we’ve heard from the bar’s management that they’re not planning to sell for the moment, meaning one of the better cocktail destinations on this side of downtown appears to be safe for the time being.

Header image caption: The southwest corner of Fifth and Lavaca Streets, where a residential tower is planned by apartment developer the Hanover Company. Photo by James Rambin.