[NYC2ATX]

The biggest problem here, and it's been brought up before, is the parking requirements. Office towers in Austin will need to provide parking for their tenants until either the city decides otherwise, or a transit system renders them less necessary...and then the city decides otherwise. Yes parking can be placed underground, but that increases costs exponentially, and it's not appealing to developers. Hotel builders with an already signed brand property or residential builders in Austin's current real estate environment will drop the extra cash because they know they'll make money back on their investments, but commercial office space, as always, is the least certain. Therefore, to build a towering office building now would likely require a massive and undoubtedly hideous parking structure, and if that's the case, I'd rather wait until there is a transit system to support tall office buildings than have them built now in bloated form. We don't want Austin to become Houston or Atlanta, at least not in that sense.