yeah, um, why don't you pop out to Marfa a few days and take care of that! :yes:

Oh.... just throw in some radom cranes for good measure. It will look fun and it will drive folks crazy trying to figure out what buidings they are! :yes:

Just don't put a crane in for the Fairmont. I've been wanting to see how that fits in superimposed over our skyline for a long time. I think that's going to be as awesome as the Austonian!

I didn't see anyone mention this, so I'll go ahead and post about it. Austin Towers recently blogged about this office building project, Capitol Commons, which is planned at northeast corner of 13th and San Antonio.

http://i.imgur.com/itm3qX3.png

The blog also mentions a couple other mid-rise projects in the works.

Interesting. I first found out about that project many, many years ago. Probably 2002 or so I would think. We happened to be driving past the site and saw the sign/rendering up and I snapped a few photos of it.

I've also seen the site plans for it that were filed with the city. The elevations show it to be 140 feet to the spire, 127 feet to the mechanical penthouse, 103 feet to the main roof, and 89 feet to the top floor. It'll have 8 floors. The address is 1303 San Antonio Street. The site is occupied by a commercial business in a house and a small parking lot. Height wise it's basically the same as what's there now. There are three buildings to the south that are 120 to 135 feet tall.

I had thought long ago that that project was dead.

Also forgot to mention before I left is that the Austin ISD Performance Hall has started at Mueller.

Proposed Project
 

Has any heard anything about the proposed project at 3rd and Congress, which will include the current site of the Children's Museum?

Biz Journal wrote about the Children's Museum today. Nothing much.

I've heard from an inside source that a huge project has been proposed for that site and that it's working its way through the channels. i was curious if anyone had heard.

Jude blogged this morning about a zoning change request on this. Here's the request. Proposing 55,000 sq. ft. of retail and 1,472,000/700,000 sq. ft. of office (pages 4 and 7 have different square-footage figures).

Even the smaller number is an extremely large amount of space. However, I can't see another office project starting with the other 2 that have broken ground. While the office market is strong, it isn't red hot like the apartment market or soon to be condo market. That seems like a great spot for condos considering the rapidly dwindling supply and no other announced projects. I can't imagine an office building of that size getting off the ground any time soon.

1.4 million sq ft!? thats the size of the williams tower in houston....

It sounds similar to the Stacy tower. Someone looking to get zoning permits to build something really large then flip it.

I think the permit is asking for 700,000+ sq ft and a 12-1 FAR. That could still be a 700-800 ft tower with a 15,000-20,000 floor plate above a parking garage.

One does not ask for a specific SF...they ask for the proper FAR to allow for the desired SF. In this case, if they are truly asking for a FAR of 12-1, then the max SF on this property is just under 710,000 SF. They would need at least an FAR of 24-1 to achieve 1.4 million SF. I am curious as to who is running the show with this big of a discrepancy. The total proposed SF identified in the official application is 1,530,880 (or an FAR of 35.144-1).

This is property owned by World Class Capital Group. They are not (currently) in the business of developing multi-million SF office towers. They are, however, and investment company. Thus, I believe this move is to improve their position on this property.


On a personal note, I'd love to see a 1.5 million SF tower be erected on this site. I just don't see it being developed by WCCG.


I would not be surprised if the city is inundated with "final" CURE requests before the bullish#t density bonus program kicks in.

Hell, if I owned a developable piece of property downtown, I'd be going through the same process...get the highest density possible for my piece of land.

Over the coming months it is going to be interesting to see how the values of properties fluctuate with the implementation of the required density bonus plan. Due to the possible increased cost in developing a piece of CBD real estate, the values may decrease unless already zoned CURE or some other grandfathered higher level of density.

When you are asking for a specific FAR you are asking for a specific sq footage.

Any chance that tower is going to be the twin Austonian that the insider guy told me about a year ago? I still wonder if there was any truth to that conversation.

Whatever the "insider" guy told you a year ago can't be true because the current investors bought the site five months ago.

Oooohh I've always wanted to drag the Williams tower to Austin cause I think it would look good in our DT would love to sew something similar built!

Makes sense that it is not true.... Dang, that guy was so certain too, his company did all the electrical buildout of the hyatt and 4 seasons I think. What project do you think he was referring to? He had to be talking about some other project that the austonian people were doing and he must have been describing it according to the size of the project....