Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndic
Oh yeah, I think the general consensus is that this building is a success, right? I mean, it should be. It's a nice building and interesting to look at. Especially at ground level. Pretty soon, it will be a bustling cafe, right smack dab in the heart of downtown, at 7th and Congress.
I work right across the street so I can take some pictures on Wednesday.
I agree with all of your positives, Geckos. Not taking up too much space is huge for me. Looking at AusTxDevelopment's drone aerial shots got me thinking that Austin isn't going to turn out as dense and vibrant as it could, largely because of the fact that all of these gigantic buildings are being built with huge podiums; be they for parking or something else. In that way, we're still paying for the destruction the automobile wrought upon the urban landscape. And I guess the city council gives 0 fucks to stop it.
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Yup, I agree with all of that. Basically, some buildings can take up an entire city block and still be pretty nice (Frost Bank has 90% of one, One Congress Plaza should be awesome once the food court thing gets built). But, for the most part, these huge buildings being built are causing me to think that our skyline is tending towards one like Houston's or Dallas's or Los Angeles's, where there are a lot of tall, cool looking buildings, but still nothing to really
do.
Compare that to US Cities with awesome urban centers, like Chicago, NYC, or D.C. These cities certainly have large buildings, but they're few and far between. Building things on smaller pieces of land forces the developer/architect to be more creative with the space, and it lends itself towards more "stuff" in a downtown generally. If every city block in Austin is reserved for a huge building, then there's no room for retail, restaurants, and other stuff that would naturally come after the demand rises.
So for now, it looks like anything that really adds to to livability of downtown is going to need to be planned into the developments from the outset. Unlike in Chicago, DC, or NYC, where a developer could buy a space, and build a grocery store, or 3 small retail stores, there's no room for that in Austin because all of the blocks are already "reserved" for larger developments. I suppose Congress Ave. is really the only exception to this rule, since the blocks are already individually divided up so small, and there's already something built on basically every space there.
EDIT: One Congress Plaza looks cool and should be great for Congress Ave. after the food court thing gets built, but of course I forgot that they actually use 1.5 entire city blocks, since they have that monstrous parking garage right behind it.... And since it's tied to the building, it will basically never become anything more for the next 50 years...