Great pics, Merry Christmas!

Damn Austin, rock on. Incredibly jealous of the verticality of that city.

Looking good. I'm looking forward to seeing it done.

New Year's Day 2014.

http://i.imgur.com/7RbZ22F.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/P36oj7d.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CrlkSah.jpg

Looks like we'll be seeing glass on this one soon. They've started hanging metal slats on the lower few levels to attach the facade. It's hard to tell what kind of facade the parking levels will have based on the renderings, it looks like at least the South side facing 3rd Street will be glass. Not sure about the East and West sides.

I would assume all sides will be the same so what you saw will probably be on all sides. I'm only basing that on Frost since all sides have the same materials other than the paneling on Congress and the side facing 4th where the garage part is.

1-22-14

http://i.imgur.com/PvW6OVB.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/lmlF3k8.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/R7pEMRC.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/76FxsXu.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/8jJb3Y0.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/YwoWIyt.jpg

Normally I don't like towers sitting on top of above ground parking, but man I like how much quicker they are to go up. This thing seems to be going up as fast as Skyhouse did.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this one done. The first new office highrise in a decade.

As long as the building has street level retail, I'm all for it. The parking levels add that much height to the building, as well as alleviate potential parking issues.

Thanks for the pictures, CorvairKeith.

1-25-14

West facade
http://i1297.photobucket.com/albums/...psb1a40054.jpg

http://i1297.photobucket.com/albums/...psbc48650f.jpg

Also, the Starbucks at The W opened. I checked it out yesterday. Great views of downtown! Enjoy the view of the Frost Tower from that Starbucks while you can. Colorado Tower will definately block it.

Wow this blows my mind. I had no idea office growth had been that lackluster, when the residential boom in Austin is positively massive.

Well, there's also IBC Bank Plaza, if you consider that a high-rise. That will surely be finished before this.

True. IBC Bank Plaza is technically a highrise and will be finished before the Colorado Tower. But it's less than half the height of the Colorado Tower. I just meant that the Colorado Tower will be the tallest and most recognizable building since the Frost Bank Tower in 2004. The Bowie (apartment tower) will also have about 40K square feet of office space. The most recent office "highrise" in downtown was the 1108 Lavaca building, a state office building in 2008. But's only 9 floors and 126 feet. 4 of those floors are actually parking, and the two top floors are in a small portion of the building on one corner.

Its interesting that according to the schedules the Colorado Tower will actually be finished a couple months before the JW Mariott even though JW is topping out and Colorado is just starting to rise.... Going to be fun to watch...

Looks like there's only one more level of parking until they begin the actual floors :D

I wonder if construction will slow down when they get to the office floors (because they're more complicated?) or speed up?

It will definitely speed up. Aside from being smaller than the garage levels (you can see on the renderings that the office tower is narrower than the parking deck below), they are also flat. This will make a big difference as a flat floor is much easier to form and pour than the double-helix parking deck.

I'd hate to park on the 12th floor.

So what we have right now is one giant parking garage...is this the tallest level of parking in Austin?