Waterloo Central Office Project Heads for a Shuttered Smoke Shop Downtown

Image: Elevate Growth Partners / Runa Workshop

A 39,000-square-foot office and retail project known as Waterloo Central is planned at the former site of the now-closed Gas Pipe (The Gas Pipe? The Gas Pipe!) smoke shop at the southeast corner of East Fifth and Sabine Streets in downtown Austin.

Here’s a view of the site from roughly the same perspective as the rendering above.

Imagined by local developers Elevate Growth Partners with design from Austin architecture studio Runa Workshop and the civil engineers at Big Red Dog, the five-story building bound for the diminutive 0.2-acre tract at 701 East Fifth Street is limited in height by a Capitol View Corridor passing over the property — but along with its office floors, the structure manages to fit an extra 4,397 square feet of potential retail or office amenity space below grade on the first level. 

Image: Elevate Growth Partners / Runa Workshop

Located along the Sabine Street Promenade and the upcoming Waterloo Greenway improvements to Waller Creek, not to mention only one block from the new downtown MetroRail station currently under construction at Red River and East Fourth Streets, the project’s three full 9,690-square-foot Class A office floor plates seem inclined towards creative tenants, with the developer’s marketing material describing their size as a “full-floor occupancy opportunity to a smaller footprint user.” 

“We are thrilled to be a part of this exciting project! Austin is an entrepreneurial city, the key to its success is the concept of discovery, looking at things in a new way, revealing new opportunities and experiences. This building embodies such spirit. The design showcases the unexpected and intentional duality of contrasting materials.”

– Aaron Vollmer, AIA and Jean Pierre Trou, AIA, IIDA
Founding Principals, Runa Workshop

The building’s architects at Runa Workshop are also behind the WeWork building at 801 Barton Springs Road, which is coincidentally the home of TOWERS.net HQ. In fact, the Waterloo Central structure appears to share a few design cues with that building, albeit on a smaller scale. Runa is also the designer for upcoming office projects on South Lamar Boulevard and Burnet Road — a pretty solid lineup for a smaller firm. Waterloo Central, which is currently seeking tenants, is expected to deliver in 2021.

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