Amen to this.

Downtown needs mid-rise infill with the occasional sporadic taller signature tower.

The domain needs vertical mixed use infill, and then maybe we can talk about doing 10-15 story towers with perhaps a 20 story or two tower after that.

The major vmu corridors into downtown should stick with that: vmu. Perhaps up to 10 stories as you get closer to downtown, but not more than that.

[QUOTE=OU812;6569924]There's a few 8-10 story buildings spreadout across the metro area. IBM, The Aboretum, 2 google towers by Mopac. Plus there is a 10 story hotel, and 7 story office building currently being constructed in west Austin.

[QUOTE=OU812;6569924]As you eluded to, land codes and zoning have had something to do with this fact. Furthermore, Austin has grown much faster than San Antonio since its incorporation. And until recently, city leaders have fought growth.

It is hard to be in a continual state of land code reform as your metro doubles in size every 20-25 years. It takes a forward-thinking governmental establishment (one in which acknowledges and embraces the fact that Austin is a fast-growing city); as rewriting city codes can take the better part of a decade to create and implement. By that time, said city has grown by 50%.

Waller Park Place Tower B : How tall will it be? 55 to 60 floors? Austonian at 56 and 683 FT. I would say at mid 600ft. Nice additional to Austin skyline if it s built!

http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/in...osed-projects/
Now it is called Waller Creek Center.
Scroll down to the end.

Waller Park Place seems to be the most often used working title:

http://www.ibigroup.com/projects/waller-park-place

Its interesting how much my point of view has changed over the last 15 years. Back then I really wanted Austin to have clusters of highrises throughout the city most because I was always impressed every time I was in Houston. Over the years that point of view has faded away and I agree with everyone that it's better to build up the Downtown core until its at capacity before building tall buildings in other areas of the city. Having said that I feel that South Shore Central is the right area to build highrises (which is occurring of course) outside the traditional boundaries of DT but South Shore Central will basically become the south extension of DT.

Also as others have said, VMU midrises from 4 to 8 floors are a good start to building up areas of the city along transit corridors like Lamar and Riverside and midrises from 9 to 12 floors are fine for the Domain at this time. Eventually we will have height density but it is much better to fill up empty and underutilized land first.

Lots of renderings in this article. Here's my favorite:

http://i.imgur.com/yRNe7M5.png
Image used courtesy of Gensler

http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/ne...eres-four.html

http://www.austin360.com/weblogs/atx...cuit-americas/

Here's my favorite Austin X Games promo so far. I'm just now getting into the X Games much like I just started getting into Formula 1 racing when the Austin race was announced:

http://xgames.espn.go.com/video/1089...on-ross-austin

Interesting promo. I actually walked straight past him while walking my dog when they were fimilng in front of the Stevie Ray Vaughn Statue. I guess it did turn out my guess was right of it having something to do with X games. X games are here.:cheers:

Fifth and West:
Link: http://bizjournals.com/austin/blog/r...ls.html?r=full

Renderings included inside the link. 39 floors.

I live in Houston and I must admit, I am absolutely amazed by the wonders going on in Austin. I canoed on Ladybird Lake 2 weeks ago and the amount of cranes in the area is just jaw dropping...

A few photos I took of downtown today. :)

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5490/...734e61fa_c.jpg

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5316/...08c7a0b4_c.jpg

This view is going to be pretty surreal once all those projects are completed. 5th and West will fill in that gap between 7rio and the Monarch nicely. I can't wait until Seaholm and Block 1 start getting some height to them.

It sure will. :cheers:

The city released a new Emerging Projects List. It isn't as up to date or accurate as it could be if you an Austin development nerd.

ftp://ftp.ci.austin.tx.us/DowntownAu...2014-05-27.pdf

https://scontent-a-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/...90180249_o.jpg
The Trail Foundation‎ The Boardwalk Grand Opening - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

https://scontent-b-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/...91802663_o.jpg
The Trail Foundation - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

From the roof of the J.W. Marriott. Found on reddit.

http://i.imgur.com/N12UP2S.jpg

New crane up at 5th and Brazos, where they had torn down the garage:

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2937/...2dc06db9_b.jpg


And the Westin is above ground now:

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2925/...fa42170c_b.jpg