Context is everything. None of what you said has a thing to do with my post at all.

What I said is that I live in Atlanta and that we don’t build any tall towers here anymore. I’m aware that Atlanta has tall buildings but those were all built many decades ago in the past...

Sorry if I came across as rude.

I didn't misunderstand. I agree with you on Atlanta's skyline. It's weird. Indeed they have a lot of tall buildings but it's too spread out to look remotely impressive. I lived about six hours from there in the panhandle of Florida. Not many American cities are doing what austin is where there's so much new construction going on. Especially for a city Austin's size it's stupid impressive. And that's coming from someone who's lived all over, including chicago, home of the skyscraper. Austin has a lot to be proud of.

Ok, I re-read your post and in your reply to mine, you embellished your post. But in doing so, I get your point. I didn't read that you aren't getting any new buildings to the scale we are. You didn't say that. And I was being complimentary to what is already in place. I spent many weekends for many years in NYC and been to Chicago and Boston many times, so my opinion on other city skylines come from seeing the real deals. We are a few years away from me qualifying ours to the higher ranks. 6x, Republic, and this supertall should clinch it for me, plus the projects in Rainey. Fwiw, the bulk of what I say in my almost 4000 posts are just my personal opinions and interpretations, often going against the grain and against popular opinion and I'm sure I come off as ignorant sometimes. But hey, I gotta be me.:cool:

Anyway, pulling this back to 98 Red River... We might be getting a supertall! Here! In Austin! Using ILUVSAT's height estimate, we could have the 18th tallest building in the country. The tallest building outside of NY/IL/CA. Here. In. Austin. What a marker on the map this would be for us, along with 6XG, BBVA, 4th & Brazos... this city is on fire.

Austin has some ultra luxury hotels and curious where these rank in stars.

Four Seasons
Fairmont
The Line
Van Zandt
Hotel ZaZa
Austin Proper
Commodore Perry

I apologize for my wording earlier. I could’ve done a better job saying towers built recently in Atlanta in the last decade or since the Great Recession.

I have no ill will towards you or your posts. But please understand, even a tower like 44 East that now gets overlooked in your development pipeline in Austin would represent the tallest thing built in other major cities. That’s where Atlanta is with skyscraper construction. We have plenty of cute and pretty 200-400 footers in the pipeline but just too bad their height is nothing substantial though.

Atlanta needs to fill in the gap in the skyline between DT and MT with talls.

Over the past few years I've seen several Austin hotels get 4.5 star ratings including the Foo Fighters's favorite - Saint Cecilia. Maybe there is a big difference between 4.5 & 5 stars?

Those are not considered "ultra luxury" by the industry. They simply are not. The only chain (or management company) to be considered that highly is the Four Seasons (as they are widely considered a Top 10 chain/management organization in the world). However, Austin's version is not their highest rated.

Rankings by Trip Advisor, Expidia, Yelp, and the like are not the standard in actual star rankings. ILUVSAT listed the two widely recognized lists considered to be the gold standard by the hospitality industry.

I was looking at the article that Towers.net published today, and they had a better larger version of the elevation I was looking at. That 408 foot 3 inch sea level elevation I was having trouble seeing is actually 608 feet 3 inches. That height isn't the ground level height, it's to a point on the podium roof. So, we'll likely have to wait to have an actual height until we can view the site plan and elevations.

https://austin.towers.net/[email protected]

That makes more sense to me anyway as I was thinking that 408 feet seemed a little low for the sea level elevation of the site. Most of the lowest sea level elevations around downtown near the river hover around 445 feet above sea level. I should have figured. The river (water surface level) itself is around 423 feet above sea level. So, going by that, I think the height will probably be around 1,025 feet or so give or take a few feet. Either way, we're still looking at a new tallest for Texas, and it'll be about 100 feet taller than Dallas' tallest. Crazy.

The more I look at it, the more it looks like a Lake|Flato-type building, which I usually love.

This thing is gorgeous. Really hope it gets built 'as-is'

It's 1,021 feet according to the original source at HAIF. Urbannizer asked him to clarify the height.

Maybe they could add a spire to take it to 1100'.

There's a difference between diamonds and stars. Diamonds are a ranking by AAA, and stars were a Mobil Travel (now Forbes) designation. So far as I know we only have 4 diamond hotels in Austin (no 5 diamond), a handful of 4 star hotels (no 5 stars) The starred hotels are Four Seasons, Archer, Proper, and Fairmont. Granduca gets an honorable mention.

Hard to say if there's a market for 5 star luxury here. Much of what Austin is known for is a specific kind of high-gloss casual service -- which is unique and becoming reknowned around the world -- but also doesn't necessarily fit the classic definitions of luxury. Will people come to Austin looking for something that's kind of intrinsically NOT Austin?

Interestingly enough, the next generation of towers that we're discussing (even aside from this particular one) are clearly indicating we're a much higher profile city than even maybe we think we are. Not just in how each tower looks separately, but also in the aggregate -- that there's THIS much activity going on -- during a PANDEMIC -- suggests something bigger is happening in Austin. I feel like we've lept over some major stages of development in the span of a couple of years and are in "global asian city" territory all the sudden. So . . . just as a speculative amenity, maybe a 5 star is one of the things we'll need by the time our next transition period is done.

Tallest building in Texas
Second tallest mixed-use building west of the Mississippi
Third tallest building west of the Mississippi

And the Wilshire Grand in LA has a giant antenna that otherwise would leave it shorter. (Same with the 1023' Atlanta building (90' antenna)).

I know how the diamond/star system works. May I suggest you go back and read ILUVSATs post - to which my comment was referring.

Additionally, 5-diamond/5-star is not all about "luxury." It's about services and amenities (in addition to the subjective "luxury" aspect). Furthermore, landing a 5-anything does not mean it's going to be a big-named management company. It's more than likely going to be a smaller company.

Austin is absolutely ready. In fact, I know of a few, eyebrow-raising, small/boutique hotel management companies who have been sniffing around for some time (all run 5-diamond/5-star locations around the globe).

On a side note, Austin is home to two of the Top 10 destination spas in the U.S. (both Top 25 in the world).

Which two?

The Rainey Street District and South Central Waterfront District are separated but will be connected with a new pedestrian bridge. This will allow people to easily cross the river to access their jobs, convention center, restaurants and hotels. So having a new hotel here will get business from both the north and south of Lady Bird Lake. A huge benefit for the new hotel should be the view from the new bridge day/night with a spectacular of downtown and the bats.

https://www.virtualbx.com/wp-content...rendering2.jpg

I'm a couple of days late on this one but WOW, this will make Austin MORE WELL KNOWN across the country once this is built out. Thank god for a new proposal during covid times. Hopefully this moves forward FAST. I'm loving the height that this city is getting throughout its downtown core

https://i.imgur.com/l2hIbRp.png

Seeing this one illuminate orange during the night time when there's football... wow