Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas (Post 8434011)

I think your concern here is that the concrete strip will be visible from the south over the top of the Hotel ZaZa, which is 24 floors, while this strip of concrete on this tower is 30 floors. However, the Hotel ZaZa is 305 feet tall, while the concrete strip is 307 feet high. That's going to be a pretty dense block with three high rises on it, and it's fairly unlikely that the concrete strip will be all that visible from the south. The "best view" of it will likely be from the southwest if you're far enough away, you might see it above the roof of The Plaza Lofts adjacent to it. I don't think it'll be visible at all from the south or southeast since it'll basically the same height as the Hotel ZaZa.

The 30th floor of this building will be 307 feet 2 inches, according to the elevations.

Originally Posted by _Matt (Post 8433877)

The south elevation shows a large section of painted concrete up to about floor 30 (I can't read the elevation).

Immediately south of the building is an alley and then Hotel ZaZa, which has only 24 floors.

So the concrete section doesn't align in height or really match the north face of ZaZa since ZaZa has a cutout in the middle.

So, why do they have a large swatch of the building covered in concrete instead of glass?

Originally Posted by Azul (Post 8441291)

this building looks like it would have a typical concrete shear core with possible steel bracing around the exterior as it's primary lateral system.

Originally Posted by Azul (Post 8441452)

There's several! You're right that there's a lot of solely concrete based structures around downtown but as we're getting taller we're starting to see more hybrid structures. I think the Spring (?) uses just interior concrete shear walls for it's lateral system but then there's the Independent that has a concrete core with steel outriggers connected from it to the extremities of the building.

You could be correct about this building and I think my post was potentially wrong/misled, but my main point is I have a hard time thinking an engineer got away with putting a shearwall on the exterior like that. I think the developer knew that another building will butt-up next to it at some point and just elected to cheap out on that area. Again, I could be wrong but I do enjoy speculating about the actual design process of these new buildings

Originally Posted by We vs us (Post 8482790)

Designwise it ain't much to write home about, but it's not a detriment to the skyline, certainly. The fact that it adds more pure residential to the CBD is a big deal in and off itself.

It's hard to tell from the renderings but it looks like they ended up leaving the Roosevelt room untouched . . . .

Originally Posted by The ATX (Post 8482796)

They did. The place apparently didn't want to sell. But Hanover had an approved demo permit for it if they did sell. I was surprised to learn that one can obtain an approved demo permit for property one does not own.

Originally Posted by We vs us (Post 8482841)

Stubborn owners! That gap’s going to give people (me?) OCD fits eventually.