An aerial view of the Summit site from the property’s marketing materials in 2020. Image: Horizon Realty Austin
A mixed-use project bound for East Riverside Drive could bring six floors of new residences alongside 3,500 square feet of retail space to an unusually narrow tract on one of the city’s fastest-growing corridors. The project, described in city site plan filings as a 72-unit condo community known as The Summit at Riverside, would replace two vacant retail storefronts and one residence at a 0.57-acre assembly of adjacent properties located between 1605 to 1609 East Riverside Drive along with the addresses in the rear from 1007 to 1009 Summit Street.
It’s one of the countless sites in this area located inside the bounds of the East Riverside Corridor Regulating Plan adopted in 2013, which aims to incentivize dense development in this region with bonuses for affordable housing and other community benefits. In its initial site plan filings the project mentions its plans to seek those bonuses, with the stated height of six floors likely to rise past the property’s base limit of 50 feet. To meet the requirements of the ERC Regulating Plan, the development expects to offer 10 percent of its condo units at rates affordable to households earning 80 percent or less of the Median Family Income for the Austin metro, which in 2023 is no more than $65,450 for an individual or $93,450 for a family of four — in the case of this project, that’s eight income-restricted residences expected in the building.
Longtime Austinites may remember the main storefront at this tract as one home of eclectic clothing, costume, and vintage boutique The Bazaar, which originally operated on the Drag near the University of Texas campus from 1966 to 1996 with a second East Riverside location opened in 1985. After closing shop in 2020, the Bazaar lives on in downtown Wimberly, still operated by original owner Gay B. Sullivan.
The properties have been owned since 2022 by an LLC associated with Houston-based real estate firm Citiscape International, and will be cleared of existing buildings prior to development. The applicants also propose transplanting a heritage tree on one of the properties to another location within the site so it won’t fall inside the footprint of the new building. Local civil engineering firm Radius is the only member of the design team named on these early filings for now, and further details aren’t available on the project’s design or anticipated development timeline at the moment. The site plan for the building, originally filed in October, is currently in review with the city.
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