Quote:
Originally Posted by NYC2ATX
Austin will never see, cannot sustain, and perhaps doesn't deserve as of now, taller office buildings the likes of which Dallas and Houston have.
Okay. Rant over.
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Exactly what MSAs the size of Austin have tall office buildings the likes of which Dallas and Houston have (I.E. over 700')? None. Okay. Did Dallas and Houston when they were Austin's size? Nope. Didn't think so.
Okay. Rant over.
I agree with the fundamental argument of the rest of the post, but taking it this far insinuates that Austin is behind the ball game compared to other similarly populated cities, when it isn't. It is far and away ahead of other similarly populated cities, and you and I both know it. Does it necessarily need tall office buildings? Austin's economy doesn't revolve around the types of businesses that historically locate their offices in larger towers*, so expecting towering sole-office buildings anytime in the future in an economy that doesn't currently and probably won't for a long time have demand for that kind of space is, frankly, misguided. Yes, we'll have some office development (most of which will likely be the scale that we're currently seeing between 10 to 30 stories), but our downtown game will continue to be dominated by mixed-use, hotel, and residential. And what's wrong with that?
*note that the only similarly sized cities to have tall office buildings akin to Dallas and Houston (again 700' or over) all have economies dominated by industries that traditionally locate in larger towers: Charlotte, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and OKC. That's it. There are 16 other MSAs besides Austin in between Charlotte and OKC in size that lack any tall office office buildings. In fact, Austin's tallest office building (Frost at 515') is taller than the tallest office buildings of Orlando (441'), San Antonio (444'), Sacramento (429'), Vegas has no major office buildings over 400', San Jose has no buildings at all over 300' and it's economically a powerhouse for the same reasons Austin is (tech), Norfolk has no buildings over 400', Providence (428' and vacant), Memphis (403', a taller building was office but is being converted to residential, technically smaller than OKC but essentially the same population) comparable to that of Portland (546'), and only truly shorter than that of Cincinnati (660'), Kansas City (624'), Columbus (629'), Nashville (617'), Milwaukee (601'), and Jacksonville (617'). To recap: that's 5 cities in between 1.3 million and 2.5 million in the with office towers over 700', 6 cities without tall office towers whose tallest tower is taller than Austin, 1 whose tallest is comparable, and 8 whose tallest is shorter. So... tell me again why Austin should be seeing these super tall office buildings?