Great news on the reduced parking requirement!!!

This will really lower dev costs and may catalyze an unprecedented building boom.

Yes, thank Science for that, its about time.

Yeah, my reaction to the Hotel ZaZa was just kind of meh. I do like the location, though. The 800-804 Hotel, though, is one of the nicer buildings planned in Austin. It really doesn't matter that the tower steps back from the street. What does matter is that the base is right up to the street, and it is. And I like the design. It reminds me of the Carnegie Tower in New York.

Anyway, both of these projects will do a lot of good for their neighborhoods. Both are going in kind of dead areas of downtown.

Anyone else love living in such a booming state or is it just me? :D

A booming country, really. This kind of stuff is happening in cities all over the country. Something to keep in mind this time of year. ;)

Texas is booming moreso than the rest of the country, however.

Someone's been selling steroids to Austin's hotel market. :haha:

Just think, this building set completely vacant in the early 90s. The hotel opened in 1924 as Austin's tallest hotel. It held that title until 1981.

http://www.statesman.com/news/busine...n-dolla/nSpT3/

No minimum parking requirements
 

Did the Council vote to nix minimum parking requirements? I think this is a fabulous idea and will lead to more infill development downtown with tall skinny buildings. This is definitely true in two places I have visited: Sao Paulo and Tokyo . Both have extremely narrow 10+ story buildings with zero parking. That's not possible now. Take the building behind the Driskill as an example. It was for sale for years at $1.2 million. Problem is, the footprint is so small there is no way to provide parking. No that barrier is removed. Granted, the rent someone could get for a building with no parking is lower, but removing this requirement makes small sites near areas with large underused parking garages highly desirable. Also, using that site as an example, imagine the marketability of a tall narrow condo or apt building with NO parking but moe affordable than other options downtown with parking. I think they would be gobbled up. Do others agree?

I was mistaken about the courthouse.
 

I hate to revisit this subject, but I want to be the one to draw attention to my folly rather than another. The power-lines around the courthouse did in fact come down today. Good taste prevails and sight lines remain clear.

It would have been an eyesore if they left the power lines up.

thank goodness

It's just too bad that the architect decided that surrounding the building on 3 sides with a 14 foot tall cement wall was a good idea. Reminds me of the 1980s when raw cement walls were in vogue as a design element. The north, south and west sides are complete dead zones now. I am sure the graffiti artists are excited however. The building is cool however....

311 Bowie demo has started
 

Most of the site has already been razed, except Tiniest Bar in Texas and house next to it.

They disassemble the crane at the Whitley apartment site. (3rd & Brazos) last Saturday.

Not defending the look...just informing/reminding that Fed court house are heavily resticted in how they can be designed now. They have to have certainly amount of set backs and protection from street level. That is why you see all the metal pilons around the building and , actually the only positive by product is that the design used the set backs to plant trees/gardens.

Regarding those ugly courthouse cement walls… I am disappointed they're not carrying the stone veneer down to the sidewalk level, where a great many of us will interface with this building daily. Like the Zach/Topfer finish-out, it reeks of budget cuts. Same with the lattice material surrounding the A/C and other mechanical stuff on the roof. Kudos for hiding that mess (are you watching, Larry Speck?) but big wet raspberries for not finishing the job and extending the stone to the very top!

I took some pictures today, some of the new apartment projects across the river and the new gables tower. I'll upload them some time later on.

Crane is going up at the Skyhouse site.

^That's all good news up there. No fugly powerlines at the courthouse, 311 Bowie clearing its site, and SkyHouse getting its crane up.

This article quoted below is talking further about the possibility of parking requirements being removed from downtown development. Here is another article on it that came out last week.


http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/bl....html?page=all

Yeah, I drove by this morning, the crane is up.