The Conrad Hotel and Condo Tower Gets a Haircut in Downtown Austin

A street-level rendering of the Conrad project, here looking towards the northeast corner of East Second and Trinity Streets just across the street from the Austin Convention Center. Image: Intracorp / Page / Rottet Studio

Earlier this spring, we learned that the 755-foot downtown Austin condo and hotel tower planned for 307 East Second Street by developers Intracorp Homes would be branded as a Conrad Hotel and Residences, a 63-story structure featuring 330 hotel rooms below 125 residences that would rise taller than any hotel and condo tower currently standing in the city, at least for the moment.

Prior to that announcement in March, we’d already received a fairly close look at the building’s design from the local architects at Page thanks to a number of renderings included in its application to the city’s Downtown Density Bonus Program — but only a few months later it appears the look of the project has already changed significantly. The tweet below comes from friend of the site Greg Anderson, who apparently attended a promotional event by Intracorp for the Conrad development that included a few renderings of the tower on display, with two we haven’t seen before:

Hello, Conrad. Nice to meet you pic.twitter.com/IfH0reYz51

— Greg Anderson (@WalkableAustin) May 4, 2022

The close-up rendering seen at top-left in Greg’s photo went out with the Conrad press release back in March, but the other two views are new to us. Each shows a building with some significant cosmetic changes from what we’ve seen before, namely that the tower seems to have lost its angled crown in favor of a flat roof, and now features a lot more vertical trim between its glass panels rather than the horizontal lines more notable in the earlier design. Greg’s photo is high-res enough that we can crop out the renderings and try to stabilize their perspective for a better look:

What appears to be the latest design for the Conrad Hotel and Residences, ditching the angled peaks of its crown for a squared-off look. Image: Intracorp / Page / Rottet Studio

Here’s a comparison between our first view of the building on the left and the latest design seen this week on the right:

On the left, the design for the tower we saw back in February when the building sought its density bonus. On the right, the design shown off by Intracorp earlier this week, with a flat top instead of the “Gumby” crown. Images: Intracorp / Page / Rottet Studio

We’ll probably snag higher-res copies of these new renderings on the project’s site at some point, but for now, let’s chat — what do you think of these changes? We must admit we liked the charmingly jaunty crown seen in the original design, which combined with a slightly greenish tint made the whole tower look almost Gumby-like — while the new images aren’t quite high quality enough to know for sure if the exterior color has changed, that crown’s definitely gone, and we can’t help but miss it.

A close-up view of some residences at the Conrad, with the Austonian condos looking a bit shorter in the background. Image: Intracorp / Page / Rottet Studio

Still, this is an extremely handsome building, looking right at home with other high-end towers like the W Hotel & Residences except significantly taller, blowing past that 700-footer mark without looking back. While the record-smashing supertall tower planned at East Cesar Chavez and Red River Streets will also reportedly contain residential and hotel identities alongside other uses like office space, for the moment the Conrad represents the peak of single-branded hotel and residential buildings announced downtown — crown or no crown, we’d like to see it go up yesterday.