Hey whenever you guys have a forum meet, do you guys get into these "heated" political discussions?

Couldn't have put it better myself.

I agree with you. Austin is not always going to be the hot city, and putting up more and more roadblocks to dense projects in the central city will come back to haunt us.

Now, if there were sensible FAR ratios already in place in this city, and a developer wanted to exceed those limits I could maybe sympathize with this new density bonus program. Probably not, but I would at least be more sympathetic. However, forcing developers of projects to jump through hoops, and make their venture even more difficult to succeed, to simply build at more than 8:1 FAR seems ludicrous.

Just want to throw this out there but Austin is now in the final four to host the X-Games in the summer as they leave Southern California for 2014-2015-2016. Other cities in the final four are Chicago, Charlotte, and Detroit.

You heard it here first! YEAHHHHHH!!!!

http://www.statesman.com/news/busine...owntown/nXzY4/

Austin's big year is going pretty much according to plan!

Major downtown projects currently (or about to be) under construction:

JW Marriott
Skyhouse
3eleven
7Rio
Seaholm
Colorado Tower
IBC Bank Plaza
The Catherine
Gables Park Plaza II
New Central Library
Hyatt ballroom and garage

And maybe pretty soon, Block 1 of GreenWater.

Truly exciting times in bat city. :cheers:

You forgot Fairmont, which I believe is almost certainly going to happen.

Also Hotel Van Zandt and Westin are supposed to break ground soon, and if we're really lucky the Fairmont as well. Shoal Creek Walk is a possibility as well.

3rd and Colorado
 

It's already fenced off...took this earlier today. PS. Y'all need to check out all the new trees on Colorado. It has truly changed that part of downtown. It used to look so shitty and dirty.
http://i1342.photobucket.com/albums/...psb5da1d0f.jpg

I only included projects that are U/C right now or are almost certain to start in the next few days/weeks. I'll love it if I'm able to add those other ones to the list.

Corazon

AAAH ahealy....don't tease us. Gimme a picture of the street. Some of us hunker down elsewhere.;)

True dat! lol

will do! ;)

New South Shore District renderings

Building 2
https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.n...00182615_n.jpg

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...95049453_n.jpg

Building 1
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...23246460_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.n...28111032_n.jpg

https://www.facebook.com/southshoredistrict

I just happened to be looking at a photo of downtown Juarez last night, and it jumped right out at me. If you took those ugly stucco hotels next to the Marriott, and moved that ugly old boxy blackish Bank of America building next to them, you would have an ugly twin version of downtown Juarez.

I can't wait for the Fairmont!

http://i.imgur.com/rD8vUQN.jpg

http://impactnews.com/austin-metro/c...-cap-proposal/

This should also go into the public transportation thread. But I also can see a rail line running over I-35 once its capped off. I also feel that the capped portion would be much wider than is being presented. So I can also see bike lanes as well as car lanes and there still would be plenty of pedestrian space. Boy this sure is a good idea. Hope that it comes to fruition. And I'm willing to bet that this section would probably over take Congress Ave as being 1. the most urban and 2. the most central and walked section of the city.

I'd like it to have just 1 more lane each way underground.

Hey, y'all. I just wanted to say I read this thread from page 1 to 113 last night and y'all have helped me decide to move back to Austin. I was at UT from 2004 to 2009 and had a blast watching the city have its first modern urban growth spurt. I eventually left because I started to feel the city was too small and not growing fast enough, but it looks like the city's downtown urban growth is really ramping up again - I'm a big urban development nut and that's pretty much the only criteria I have in picking my new city. Since my job lets me work anywhere, I've decided to move myself and my company up there. I just thought I'd share my little nerd moment and thank y'all for the awesome urban development dirty talk and construction site porn.

Hopefully when I'm up there I can actually contribute something helpful to this thread.