I'm just going by what's in the Statesman.

I'm interpreting that to mean Sutton sold the land they had to a completely different developer to pay for the land they bought and the land that was was sold to Dinerstein is much smaller because that's the kind of project Dinerstein does. I could be wrong, though.

No. Now that I read it again, it sounds right. My mistake.

The first page needs some serious updating - especially the proposed projects section.

A bigger version of the "Waller:"

http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/l...oup_050213.jpg

:fireworks::pillowfight::star::heart::soon::yeahthat::skyhighmind::djparty::dancingeggplant:multibow::banaride::fruit::nyancat::male::rainbow::fingerscrossed::wizard::cheerleader::hyper::ohyeah:drunk::eeekk::thankyouthankyou::superwhip

I really like the designs here, they are not boxes. What I really like is the base area that looks to have many levels for keeping it looking like a creek with the vegetation on shelf's with outdoor seating.

One thing is that these renders do not show balconies. I hope that is just because its a first render and they will design how they want balconies in the future. I could not see paying or renting for a place without a balcony.

bye Chain Drive. :runaway:

This really ups the ante for that Trinity Place property, no? Being next to this development would increase its value big-time. You have to think that would lead to more financing.

I agree with wwmiv. Similar-looking towers are gross. I hope they will switch it up. I have a feeling the finished project will look radically different from these renderings, but I'm hoping the base of the buildings stays about the same. I like that they seem to want to incorporate the buildings in with the creekside by having all those plants and layers.

Any developer who's watching all these projects has to be given confidence about the strength of the Austin market.

I really just want to see the GreenWater development break ground. That's still my favorite project, due to its location and size.

I was thinking the same thing yesterday. I went back to that parking garage west of Zilker Park along Mopac, and was noticing how long the skyline appeared. The view from the Long Center is also starting to get really interesting the way the skyline seems to wrap around you.

I love waterfront skylines, and this project and the others in that area are certainly helping with our's.

So does this mean Sutton is no longer pursuing the 8-story building? Or is that by the new owners?

You first posted about the revised plans from the 50-story towers to the 8-story building back on February 27.

The American Statesman says Sutton had already sold the land to Dinerstein back in December. I think when Sutton responded to your email, they already had an idea what Dinerstein had planned for the project.

And someone recently filed a site plan with the city last month. The links are in this post

I don't think Sutton submitted it, because they no longer owned the land.

I think it is the new owners (Dinerstein) who are pursuing the 8-story building. They build apartments and student housing. I can't imagine student housing being constructed in the Rainey Street area, so I'm thinking it will be apartments and I'm envisioning something similar to Gables Park Plaza Phase One.

Re : Waller Designs. Look like generic place holder designs... ripe for "fishing" interest.
At least I hope.... Feels like a 70s./80s rehash. Not a fan.
Can we please have some forward thinking Architecture!

That's what I'm thinking. 2.21 acres seems like a lot of land for such a small project, though, especially since they said the parking would be within the building. .

The renderings are not final. I think they are just showing the cluster and relative heights. Can't be the final design because it looks too much like it was made in Sim City.

The design reminds me of the Renaissance Center in Detroit.

Since “Waller Center” sits on the second site of Poe Companies' planned project for a 21c Hotel & Residences (plus office), I wonder if Poe is being pursued as an equity partner with the Sutton/Klabzuba team?!? Might the hotel and residences end up being a 21c? Curious.

Also, Constellation Property Group (out of Australia) had an option for this land back in 2006. They had planned on building a 40+ level condo project on this site. However, the RE market began it’s latest slide that year.

I hope the third time is the charm for this site!

You are the biggest critic on SSP of every single project as they are announced. But I don't mean that as a bad thing. You must be hard to please. :)

Michael is a DIVA, just like me. :cheers:

This site has gone through a lot of proposals. I even think Vignette Corp was going to build a high-rise office building or two on this peice of land in the 90's.:haha:

http://www.emporis.com/building/vign...-austin-tx-usa

It's also where there was a casino planned if I'm not mistaken. Of course that would have required legalized gambling in Texas.

UM HUM.... I just don't value building for building sake. Size ain't everything.! (
Try to resist that AHealy! don't go there).

I felt that too Kevin. Feels like something you would build at the Gallareia in Houston.

It's what came to me as well. It's what made me say they felt like late 70s early 80s.

Re: 21C/Poe. Those folks went a totally diff way with their interests. They droped the idea of Building new properties. What they really like are older properties and rehabs. It's what they are good at.

BTW.... at the time it was designed, the original 21C here ( where the Whitley is ) was a pretty nice design. ( That was for you Hill Country! ;-)

Please, you guys make me laugh. Those aren't final renderings.... they probably just grouped together to show height.... It's not like we have Trump down here building glass boxes.

They will resemble the original design.... This is seriously exciting.

Yes, that's exactly where Vignette's office towers were going to be. I couldn't find any renderings of the Vignette project, but I did find a map showing what parts of the Rainey Street area it would occupy from an old December, 2000 article in the Austin Chronicle about the Chain Drive.

Naked City
Razing the Bar
By Amy Smith, Fri., Dec. 8, 2000

http://www.austinchronicle.com/binar...aked-7465.jpeg

Yeah, and besides Trinity Place, there's a second project not shown in the rendering. The Hotel Van Zandt. Isn't that supposed to be in that lot immediately north of The Shore?

And then there's that whole undeveloped block bounded by Cesar Chavez, Red River, Driskill & IH-35. Directly across the street from that (on the north side of Cesar Chavez) is where the Fairmont's supposed to be built. If every single one of those projects were to be built, that is going to be one dense area.

OK - sorry to quote myself, but I found something else interesting. It's a premium-content article from the Austin Business Journal from March 29, 2013, but it's old enough that non-subscribers can now read it for free.

Two major sites in downtown Austin about to sell
Land near convention center won’t be blank much longer
Jan Buchholz
Staff Writer- Austin Business Journal

The SE corner of Cesar Chavez & Red River is the block bounded by Cesar Chavez, Red River, Driskill & IH-35.

The Sutton Company is the local group and their project would be on the SW corner of Cesar Chavez & Red River. The California group must be the one that's trying to purchase the SE corner of Cesar Chavez & Red River, so we may be hearing about another proposal soon.

This was the rendering for the Vignette project. Also note that they included the original design for the Four Seasons Residences (highlighted to the left). That design called for a 320 foot building with 28 floors.

http://i.imgur.com/RQ8Xyay.jpg

Potential delays at Fairmont
 

Seriously they can make an exception in this instance while its not out of the question we could see a flood event between now and the end of 2014 but I seriously doubt any frequency. They can set up whatever they need to lessen the impact but I say let them start construction ASAP.

I don't view this as a serious issue either. I don't see how this can be considered a surprise since the projected date for the start of construction has always been before the tunnel was finished.

It's of course a serious issue...that's a terrible way of looking at and trying to mitigate risk.

However, this article is also a very good sign that the project is continuing to move forward.

IIRC, the Circuit of the Americas race track faced a similar sort of problem. They needed permission to have construction proceed on their land, which included some in the flood plain. The flood plain issues would be mitigated through grading and drainage, and the flood plain would be re-drawn after that, but in the meantime they needed to build. There was always a chance that a catastrophic flood could happen during construction and before the flood plain issues were mitigated, but it certainly didn't rise to the seriousness of stopping the project all together until the mitigation was done.

I meant a serious issue in regards to delaying construction. I get the impression that you are referring to a flooding event.

More confirmation that Hotel Van Zandt is back on track:

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/busi...atesman_launch

This is great news! And insane... are all these recent project announcements due to the logjams of applications finally being broken, which I remember being mentioned a month or so ago?

In case anyone hasn't seen this yet. The downtown emerging projects list was updated on 04/15.

ftp://ftp.ci.austin.tx.us/DowntownAu...s_apr_2013.pdf

Nice list... Imagine when the statesman property becomes avail for infill... Prime prime dead space at the moment.

Speaking of which members may want to attend this.

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=...7&e=5f197fd290

Let me tell you, you are going to LOVE the Hotel Van Zandt! It's not going to be like those cheap stucco hotels East of the Marriot. When they say it's going incorporate a bit of the Hotel San Jose, they mean it! I've stayed at Kimpton Hotels in San Francisco, and they are the best places I have ever stayed, bar none.

And Hotel Van Zandt will be the perfect addition to the Rainey Street District. It will fit in like a silk glove. Lucky Austin! Their bar will be not to be missed! It will be a place for all Austin to congregate.

Have you seen the most recent design? It's going to be stucco. The original design wasn't, but this one is.

I don't get the burn on stucco. Some have said it isn't weatherproof, which seems unlikely since just about every building in coastal Florida is stucco. You'd think a region that hangs out in hurricane territory would be weatherized.

I'm less concerned with material choices than I am design choices, detail, architectural style and color. And of course does it have street level retail and does it interact with the street.

Me neither- I like stucco.

Also, just about everything in California is stucco too (and no I'm not from there).

I'll throw my name in as a fan of stucco also. A lot of the new homes in my neighborhood are stucco, and I like the way they look.

I used to live in Arizona, where stucco is everywhere. It's awful. :yuck:

Buncha stuccoists on this board. If done right there is nothing wrong with a little stucco. It's when you have those massive blank walls with no windows that it looks ugly. But all blank walls look horrible no matter the material used.

Absolutely this is true, and I come from Staten Island, the land of "instead of renovating our pre-war or 70s era home with quality materials, let's plaster it all over with stucco that (poorly) imitates the architectural flourishes there before." The only time stucco has been pulled off in these parts is with the new imitation-brownstone-style homes they've been building since 2000ish. Even there, there's hits and misses. At least in Arizona, they have the Spanish-style and Adobe look to defend the copious use of stucco there. Then there are the new mid-rises in Los Angeles, some of which are absolutely sublime, and define a style for LA the way the late-19th-century architecture of Paris defines that city.

The point of this digression: like with all building materials, when done correctly, stucco can be stunning. :tup:

Stucco for the Ages?
 

Stucco is a great material in some applications on buildings of 5 stories or less. Apartments and homes can look great clad with stucco. A stucco church tower can also look stunning, however, church towers do not have windows with mullions and glass. Any building over about 5 stories, with windows, that uses stucco looks cheap to me.

The reason to use stucco on any contemporary style highrise is to reduce the cost of building. Any highrise building clad in stucco looks like it is meant to be a temporary building...not a building for the ages.

Can anyone imagine a new highrise in Manhattan clad in stucco?

I'm in Arizona today..... in a stucco building. Everthing here looks like it was built in the Stucco 80s:yuck:

Big news from UT.


UT regents expected to OK $334.5 million plan for med school

$334.5 million project

4 building complex

515,000 square feet of space in 3 buildings: an academic building, medical office building, and research building.

480,000 square foot teaching hospital.

New $250 million teaching hospital would replace University Medical Center Brackenridge.

The medical office building could be a joint venture with a private developer.

At least two parking garages would have 1,000 spaces.

Opening fall 2016.

Red River would need to be realigned "straightened" north of 15th Street. UT would pay for it.

Plans call for keeping the Erwin Center for now, but it would be moved in 6 to 15 years as the medical school grows.

The draft plan calls for future growth of a 120 bed psychiatric hospital and a cancer center. There could also be another medical office building and more parking garages. There could also be more academic and research buildings.

Horible plan. Horrible. Total Sub-urban Campus thinking. Tear down the basketball pratice facility and remove it instead of a PARK!!!!!!! Go vertiacl with all that shit on that huge piece of land right accross from Brack. ( or is it in a CVC?)
Also, I think it's absolutely CRAZY to re-align Red River. Lets create even more traffic issues. It's one of only 3 (?) NW corridors we have bet 35 and Mopac.
I hope the city says no to the re-alignment and fights the plan to kill the greeen space that feeds into the park to the south.

Such incredible Institutional Narcissim on the part of UT once again.

Argh.

The reason UT would be able to redevelop Centennial Park is because UT owns that land. It's not city owned land, so it's not a city park. UT could build a Walmart there if they wanted to.

The zip code for Centennial Park is 78701. As you can see from this map, the park isn't listed as a city owned park. Neither is Clark Field, which is also owned by UT.

http://www.austinparks.org/our-parks.html

Also I wouldn't be surprised if after Brackenridge is replaced we saw it torn down, and the land turned into more park space adjoining Waterloo Park to the west. Or they could at least realign Red River so that it would cut straight through the Brackenridge property just east of the parking garage. That would allow the land where the Brackenridge garage is now to join the rest of Waterloo Park. It would also move Red River Street away from Waller Creek and have it be a more intimate park.

And actually, straightening Red River would ease traffic congestion. I don't see how realigning it would cause more traffic problems. Curvy streets usually lead to traffic congestion.

I'm actually in favor of developing some parks. I'd rather have density than a park that's hardly ever used and is costly to maintain. I realize I'm in the minority with this opinion. Obviously, we need some parks, but how many? It's easy to go overboard with the parks. Especially in a city like Austin. They spread the city out and make it feel suburban. A medical school can do a lot of good.

But this doesn't even seem like it's going to affect the park very much.

http://i.imgur.com/pj1UN0r.jpg

Notice that the academic building is directly south of Cooley Pavilion and the hospital is mostly in place of what was previously Red River Street. All this is doing is developing part of the Frank Erwin Center parking lot and the UT tennis courts. Small parts of Centennial Park look like they will be affected, but for the most part the park seems like it will be unscathed. Are we really so religiously and zealously NIMBYish about parks that we're unwilling to even sacrifice small parts of them in order to build a state of the art medical school? If so, I would have to ask why?

I like this plan. I think it's perfect. It adds density and coherence in a really responsible way. It's going to be a medical school right by a park, which will make for a really great experience for the employees, students, and patients.