I rarely get disappointed, but this kind of sucks. I'm so torn because I'm glad it's getting built and I'm sure I'll come to like it when it's done, but like, F**K. I'm inclined to hope that the odd angle of the rendering means it will appearing slenderer in reality than it appears here. After all, the difference between the roof of the JW (404') and this spire's height (595') is nearly 200 feet...I don't think that looks like a 200-foot-tall spire, which is kind of ridiculous, so it could appear less square and more rectangular hopefully...

..or maybe not. Ugh, forget it. Well Waller Park Place will kind of block it out and then it'll be whatever, and this will block the Hilton which is god-awful. Fairmont is putting it's name on this ish too, like wtf...

Now I'm rambling, clearly I need a minute to accept it and move on. But Marriott still kind of wins here...and W. They win.

That rant was oddly therapeutic. :P :rolleyes:

What gets me is I held strong and defended any suggestions of a shorter design when all along, it was true. To those who came out saying the building would be shorter (can't remember who specifically), I apologize. Next time, I wont be so quick to deny such rumors.

Manchester SUX!..

Okay I agree that it's better than not being built at all, but we've been down this road before. I'm really tired of this crap. The original design would have been awesome. It would have been the tallest hotel in Texas. Fact is if they didn't lower the number of rooms, this building is going to be a bulky long rectangle wall with a freaking stick on top. (As others have said, a slightly larger JW Marriott without the white side wing.)

Such an opportunity for a truly tall hotel down the drain.:madwife:

I like the new design. The only problem I have with it is the front exterior, looks bland. They should have mixed glass in with it.

*sigh* Lame... well at least the long portion of the building is east to west so it'll block out the Hilton and not the the buildings to the west of it.

The spire looks to be about half the height of the actual building. So yet another 400 footer for Austin (450 max). The flattening continues.

I still like it. The design is still pretty awesome, the location will showcase it, and it's a Fairmont! :cheers:

True and it's still MUCH better than the one in Dallas.

It's not a bad looking building. I'm guessing the building, itself, is around 450' and the spire is another 140-150'. It's no 600 footer, but I think it's at least a little taller than most of the 400 footers that are clogging-up the skyline. With the cluster of Waller Creek buildings just to the south of it, I think it will make for a nice contrast. And it's being built - there's been a lot of skepticism about it ever being built, so that's definitely a positive!

It's the W with a flagpole on top. I'm holding out hope that maybe the 595' height is to the roof and not the spire. It's 1.4 million square feet with the same number of rooms as originally planned. The podium looks pretty tall in the rendering. Unless they enlarged the footprint it makes one wonder about the height.

There are 30 hotel floors in the rendering. The base is about the same height as 10-12 hotel floors, and the parapet is the same as another 4 or 5. So that's the equivalent of about 45-47 hotel floors, which are often 9-10 feet. So I'll guess it's in the neighborhood of 450 feet.

I am on the "this sux" train. It's just too wide and uninteresting...and that flag pole doesn't make it the 2nd tallest building..

Wait a minute...The project was already designed to be wide! And how are they decreasing the number of floors by 10, increasing the number of rooms by 31 and maintaining the same amount of overall space (1.4 million SF). Man, those are going to be some of the tiniest "luxury" rooms in the world!

Furthermore, the budget has seemed to increase by roughly $20 million (from $350 to $370 million).

Just as an FYI...The original site plan showed the building stretching all the way across the east-west axis...that has not changed. Also, the Statesman has always reported this building to be roughly 580' with 47 stories (obviously not including the height of the spire).

I wonder if this was a typo or misinterpretation. I hope so!

If you look at the "old" plans, level 47 was 541'8"...T.O. Topper = 571'8". The Spire extended another roughly 120 feet to 691'.

However, if you subtract 10 levels (or roughly 100'), you get into the neighborhood of the quoted 595' (including spire). If this is the case...a 120' spire on an elongated, rectangular building roughly 475' tall is going to look ridiculous!!!

A wide 460-470 foot tower of glass will still be very prominent and impressive driving down I-35. And adding 1,000+ rooms downtown will have a huge impact as well. We should be so lucky to be having two of these huge convention hotels being built when cities like Houston, Cleveland, and OKC are having to massively subsidize similar hotel proposals and often get much smaller versions of the Fairmont.

true, we are very lucky to have this happen. If they could only change the base to be more welcoming tho.....hell, straight-up copy the W if needed!

Austin needs to incorporate something similar to Denver...where certain incentives are provided for decorative crowns.

Remember, Magellan seems to be ready to come forward with their cookie cutter, wall-in-the-sky design next week.

I agree, Austin is lucky to have these developments and have them privately funded. However, if something does not change, we are going to have a skyline full of 400'-450' walls like the JW, Fairmont, Magellan's proposal, the Hilton, etc...not very pleasing, IMO.

Some of y'all can't see the forest for the trees. We're blessed for this to be happening! I'm excited. I actually like the base more than J.W. Marriott. It has fewer cheap, blank, concrete panels, more glass, and has a warm feel to it. In fact, it's sexier than the J.W. Marriott in almost every conceivable way! It's not as good as the prior design but it's still a great project. It's going to be a huge boon for the surrounding area. Austin needs this. It's going to change this city a lot.

The east end may be competing with the west end after all. I thought the west end had won but not so fast my friend!

I agree. It's growing on me. As long as it interacts with the street well, it'll be an asset to the city. 1000+ rooms across the street from the Convention Center is a huge get for Austin.

At least it appears to be oriented east-west whereas the wide portion of the JW is oriented north-south. It will look dramatic from 35 for sure.

Happy the conversation turned positive. Completely ignoring the design for a bit, though I like it, the hotel room inventory and additional exhibition space are huge reasons to be excited for this project. This will be another ~$300M+ investment in the heart of our city and it’s going to energize this area in unbelievable ways. This project should also be terrific for getting Waller Creek’s surface improvements underway. I’m not sure what’s happening with Waller Place but it seems as though the intersection of RR&CC, which has long been a sea of surface parking, is soon to be the hottest place in town.