This is literally in my backyard. Our side of the street backs up to this property. All I'll have to do for photo updates is look over the back fence. :haha:

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...e-2409422.html

Watch out for any stray crazies that might wander into your yard.

Before the old hospital closed they put up an 8 chain link fence. Actually, that did happen once. When I was a kid playing in the yard, two guys hopped the fence and ran through our yard followed by one of the guards.

I totally agree, but the real reason you don't see suburban skyscrapers in Austin is the cost. Low-rise (2-3 stories) and mid-rise (4-12 stories) are cheaper to build, not just total cost but cost per square foot. A building like Frost Bank Tower can cost between $300 and $400 per square foot to build and the owner/developer has to get higher rents to make a return on their invesment. Downtown office rents for high-rise buildings are as much as $10 to $15 per square foot higher than what an office tenant will pay in the suburbs. Low to mid-rise buildings cost between $200 and $250 per square foot to build for a nice building. Also, Austin suburbs have just as many if not more building height restrictions as downtown, but they are geared toward protecting neighborhoods rather than protecting the view of the Capitol. You have to get out in the boonies or ETJ to build something really tall without restrictions.

Also, you can build million-square-foot supertall suburban high-rises in Houston and Dallas because you have office tenants like the energy companies and big banks taking 500,000 square feet of office space in a single building. The biggest high-rise in Austin is Frost Bank Tower at approx. 550,000 square feet of office space, and Austin just doesn't have any office tenants big enough to take the big chunks of space at really high rental rates to justify building a skyscraper with more square footage than that. That's why ambitious skyscrapers like Tom Stacy's proposed building on Congress are always mixed-use with retail and residential, not just office. On the rare occasion an Austin company wants more than 300,000+ sf of office space, they don't lease space - they go build themselves a campus like AMD, Dell and Apple, or they buy an existing property, like Intel and Silicon Labs.

The Domain is Private Property.
 

I also believe that ALL of the Domain...including the roads, is private property owned by only one or two entities. It is not possible to buy any land and build. One must lease the land from Simon Property Group and the Endeavor Real Estate Group according to their rules and site master plan. The Domain is a Master Planned Community…wholly owned.

In order to have "a second downtown" it is essential to have a network of PUBLIC roads, with walkable sized blocks, and a variety of land owners who are not controlled by a singular corporation. The Domain has neither and will never be anything but a suburban, automobile based, master planned community. This may sound harsh, however, a downtown is a center for the community to come and congregate in the realm of public/private partnership. The Domain is private, private, private!

If I am wrong about The Domain being completely private property…Please enlighten me.

Actually Fox will be broadcasting the race nationwide. As far as how much exposure overall in the U.S. we will see but its going to be much better than before. Besides its the international coverage that im interested in.

Exactly.

Population
 

Something to think about. If you squeezed every man, woman and child in the entire 5 county Austin MSA into an area from Lady Bird lake on the south, to MOPAC on the west, north to Wells Branch Parkway, to I35 and then south back to the lake, you would have the approximate land size and population of Manhattan.

Maybe Austin is not so big and crowded after all!

But I35 and MOPAC still suck.

Went to see the fireworks. Heard a lot of people complain it sucked and to be honest, it really did. Austin is a major city its time to step up our fireworks display. Its pretty embarrassing to hear people say openly how disappointed they were in the display. Austin can do way better than that. Remember Aquafest??? Even the fireworks 5 years ago were better than this years and that's even skipping out on last year because of the drought. Maybe it's time to get a company to sponsor it because for a city our size, it should be better!

This is just an "aside" to the main content of this thread...that being "AUSTIN | Projects & Construction III ". Get that...III! We have gone through 2 other threads! This discussion allows us to gain a perspective on where Austin is. These new projects are happening for many reasons, including F1 and Fashion. Viva Austin!

Well I think everybody here did a great job in responses so no point for me to jump in:P

So walked by the JW site and they have a net rendering of the building at the corner of Congress and 2. More fencing and construction blockades are up. Looks like this thing is gonna get rolling any day now.

Can someone post a picture of this rendering? I will really appreciate it.

Also a few months ago I was reading a financial article that stated that a lot of family money was flowing to the Texas cities of Dallas, Houston and San Antonio from countries south of the US. Wealthy families were looking to relocate to a safer place to raise their kids and willing to invest in order to get fast-tracked toward citizenship. The article stated that Austin was not on most people’s radar. I believe with our continued strong economy and growth, coupled with events like F1 this fall, Austin will experience increased foreign investment very soon.

Does anyone know how much foreign capital is being invested in the new developments downtown? Especially the two hotels ready to start. I just assume nearly all the capital is originating in the USA. Someone out there must have some info to share.

This weekend I am going to make some time to ride around downtown to update my "current progress" pictures for all the under construction projects (except COTA). It has been a busy couple months and they need to be updated. I'll try to get a picture of the new rendering poster then. =)

Endeavor doesn't "own" any part of the Domain. They are the development partner of RREEF, who owns a large portion of the Domain and who will be financing Domain 7. Simon owns another large portion of the Domain (most of the North retail and a couple of the smaller office buildings), and another company, Cencor, owns/developed the apartments. The hotels were developed individually & separately by the hotel chains. The Domain Gateway office building is owned by a completely unrelated investment company. Some of the roadways are private and some are City of Austin. Yes, you can buy land in the Domain, for the right price, but it's unlikely that any developer would buy land from RREEF, Simon or Cencor adjacent to a site that could be developed by RREEF, Simon or Cencor to compete with your property. Would you take a gamble and build a building in the Domain, if all your tenants/clients/residents could be lured away by one of the established developers? The Domain was always planned as an "urban lifestyle center" with the "live-work-play" attitude for it's residents/tenants who are supposed to be able to walk to work, to play, to eat, to live, etc. and rarely leave their immediate surroundings (a bit Orwellian), so it was always going to be a just a handful of companies involved in the development. I'm not saying that's a good thing at all, but if the City of Austin had been involved there would never have been a Domain, at least not in the timeframe that it has happened. The City had a shot at turning the Domain into something really great when IBM put all that raw land up for sale in the early 2000's (next to JJPickle Research Center, of all things), but the City punted and it just didn't happen.

Hey guys, I moved the fashion discussion posts. You can find them in the Austin section, here:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=200302

I took a picture of it last saturday..

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-...90389460_n.jpg

I got some photos of it from the Zilker Clubhouse. It was pretty good, but yeah, it seemed smaller than in year's past. The moon however, put on an awesome show rising behind downtown. I'll edit and post some photos as soon as I can.

Anyway, it could have been worse. San Diego's fireworks had a technical problem, and ALL of the fireworks that were meant for the 18 minute show went off in just 30 seconds.



• Video Link

• Video Link

Yeah, that was so random! I was on the roof of some friends' home near downtown SD to watch the fireworks and we were all wondering WTH. Fortunately, the Sea World, Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach fireworks shows were also all in view. ;)

Thanks AusTxDevelopment for the clarification.

This also helps answer a question I posted about the foreign capital and investment in Austin. A www search showed that RREEF was purchased by Deutsche Bank AG in 2002. I am assuming that their portion of the Domain is financed mainly through Germany. However that is just a guess. Again...if anyone knows anything about foreign investment/capital flowing into Austin please post what you know. I am sure foreign interests are seeking a location in the USA to provide a return on their investment and Austin is certainly a US hotspot.