Quote:
Originally Posted by We vs us
I always have to remind myself that there are several upcoming opportunities for building bigly in the downtown area. Green Water Block 85, the Travis County Courthouse block, the enormous Waller Creek plot, the additional Manchester-owned block on 4th and Red River, etc. All seem to be mostly without CVC problems, all seem to be moving in one form or another forward.
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Green Water Block 85 probably will be the smallest building of the entire set of developments put into motion by the city ~20 years ago, so don't hold your breath on that one. It's subject to multiple waterfront overlays. And the Waller Creek plots probably aren't going anywhere
with the current developer.
That being said, the others are likely to be big, but not blockbuster:
The TravisCoCt block is probably going to be another ~400' building.
And all indications so far suggest that the Manchester development is going to be another ~400' building.
I'm also watching Brackenridge and the UT tract on 6th for the next superstar buildings, but even they are unlikely to be ~600'+.
The next big blockbuster building probably isn't on our radar yet (there are a decent* number of easily developable sites left in downtown that aren't on the development map yet) or is a parcel that's fallen off the radar (e.g. the post office site).
*there's really not. Almost all of the land in downtown Austin has either been recently developed, has historic architecture or is limited by a CVC (and we're expanding those, no less), or is spoken for in active (Brackenridge, Med School, GreenWater, Plaza Saltillo), 'active' (Waller Creek), or about to be active (Statesman, Convention Center, Cap Complex) development plans (obviously I'm only mentioning the blockbuster projects). On all sides, downtown is now bookended by neighborhoods that have substantial political power to prevent high-rise development in their VMU corridors (but so far have lacked the political power to cancel
most VMU development). I think we're at the point where we'll see slower and slower pace of development downtown announced over time and shift toward the Domain where land is cheaper AND/OR we'll finally see some of these developments actually go taller than they are now because we're actually running out of developable space downtown (this, of course, is driven in some measure by demand). There are, also worth mentioning, a number of parking lots in between 6th and 11th that aren't spoken for that could be developed with low to medium rise stuff with a sporadic high-rise where a CVC doesn't affect a lot. There are also a lot of parking lots south of the river outside of the Statesman lot that could be used for infill once the Statesman project is a catalyst for that area. But none of these is likely to end up with a structure rivaling the Independent or the Austonian. There may be some potential for one of the few remaining developable parcels in the Rainey street area for a 600'+ building. Maybe.
All of this is to say that The Independent and Austonian may very well be our co-tallest* buildings for a good time to come.
They'll appear, for all intents and purposes, as visually equivalent given their very similar heights and that the shorter of the two sits on slightly higher ground.
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