Agreed.

Luxury brand Fairmont to operate 2nd downtown convention hotel
 

By Shonda Novak
American-Statesman


Luxury management company Fairmont Hotels & Resorts will be the operator for a $350 million convention hotel planned for downtown, making Austin only the second Texas city to feature the famed brand, the company told the American-Statesman on Tuesday.

http://www.statesman.com/business/re...n-2382129.html

Whoa. That's a rendering I haven't seen before. Very cool!

http://i.imgur.com/LD5NW.jpg

Nice!
 

I sure hope this thing goes forward. It looks really nice, imo. I love this tall, slender type of building a lot and it looks fantastic. After having read the article, I sure hope the financing in fact gets secured, and hopefully having an operator for the hotel is the last hurdle.

I attended the Austin comic convention in November '11 and stayed at the Radisson only a couple of blocks away. The room was nice, I had a great view of downtown and the capitol, and I liked that they had a Starbucks and a TGI Fridays, but the architecture of the hotel itself was really generic and ugly, quite frankly. I'm happy to see this new Fairmont if it happens, and the JW Marriott. Both look like they'll make an extremely positive impact on the convention center business and the downtown skyline.

In fact, having looked at the original Marriott design, I wanted to slap whoever approved that monstrosity. Like a lot of people, I'd rather nothing be built than something that looked like that! Then they redid the design and it looked a lot better, but still left a lot to be desired.

I'm still ecstatic over White Lodging deciding to go with the JW brand. The way the design looks now isn't perfect, but it's still pretty darn cool and Austin dodged a huge bullet.

If both of these go up, it'll be a fantastic step for the city.

Core samples being drilled at the Fifth and Bowie site. !

***flips hair back bats lashes**** gurl, really????

If they are continuing to maintain their 2015 opening date, they need to get moving on construction. I want to see another crane over there! =)

OMG lol...

By the way the skybridge was changed now its not closed in but will be open to the outside. I think that is a nice touch and will incorporate the skybridge with the surrounding area.

Would love to see both the Bowie site as well as 7th and Rio start construction soon.

Yup! :banana:

I noticed that. A good compromise. Keep folks covered for weather yet connects better to street. Done. ( plus less wasted air conditioning! )

Holy hell, man. I love my city. :)

Agreed...

By the way Kevin, when will you be back on a regular basis? Hope soon.

Saw the Fairmont on KVUE..
Really hope this gets built!
The 2nd skyline boom is imminent!
:)

The skybridge on the original rendering also had an open component. It had two levels with and open and closed section. I think the big change here is they are trying to make the bridge less intrusive to the area by eliminating the upper section.

In fact, this rendering has been available for a while on the Gensler site. This link was posted earlier, but I will post it again below in case anyone here hasn't seen it yet. Rendering #4 is the one from the Statesmam article and #5 gives you a great sense of what walking across the bridge will be like. I think it will be an outstanding component of the project. Renderings #1 and #2 are from the Green Development. We will see how those turn out.

http://www.gensler.com/#aboutus/offices/32

WHOA...I had no idea there were better renders of green.
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/b...texs/GREEN.jpg
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/b...exs/GREEN2.jpg
Is Gensler still doing this???

Skybridge
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/b...ntexs/SKYB.jpg
:D:D

:previous: That's not part of Green.

hmm strange... now how do they know that ben affleck and jennifer garner will one day in the future be spotted walking their kids in downtown austin?

hahahahahahahaha


@HillCountry, the first two are part of green...the skybridge WITH celebrities is Fairmont.

My bad. I'm a little confused though. (I'm confused about a lot of things, but I'll stay on topic here.) The entire SW DT Austin area is being re-developed by different developers and includes at least the adjacent Seaholm/Gables/Austin Energy Control Center?/Demolished Green Water Treatment Facility. What exactly are we referring to when we say the Seaholm development vs. the Green development. At one point the Austin Energy site was part of Green, but isn't that being developed by a different developer than Trammel Crow who is developing the Green site?

@BevoLJ Kudos to you for doing such an excellent job of keeping up with the latest developments and construction photos on page 1.:cheers: