This is officially underway. The new rendering and link to the article on the other side of the pay wall are below.

http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/l...eek-Walk-2.jpg
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/busi...3948020.735838

Not bad. The color and the angled facade remind me a bit of Seven.

When the article says Whole Foods still owns some of this block, is it referring to the section near the creek, because isn't the 5-story mid rise section of this one going right up to 5th street and the parking garage taking up quite a bit of space as well, or is it just this one building now? Also, it says Whole Foods has already unveiled their new corporate expansion plan. Are they planning to build towers (over 100 ft or 10-stories) across North Lamar or is it going to be of the smaller scope.

Yes. That is what the article is referring to. You have it exactly right. So it appears that only this building will be built for now and the proposed parking garage and mid-rise building will come later.

Their expansion plans are quite a ways out. They have not given any definitive plans with regard to the site across Lamar. They have only said that it will be a tear down and rebuild.

I would have prefered for Whole Foods to use the rest of the land around this project to build instead of displacing so many buisnesses across Lamar.

Maybe this has been covered before, but why doesn't Whole Foods build over their surface lot - or at least part of it?

Excited for the Shoal Creek building. It'll go well in that area.

It's pretty bad. There's almost no street interaction at all. It makes me sad to see downtown Austin dying a slow death one sterile behemoth of an office building at a time. What reason would anyone have to go to this place during the weekend or off-peak hours? None. Too many of these and you have a ghost town like downtown Dallas or Houston.

I think the ground floor will have retail.

Floodplain issues. It's unavoidable. Also, retail ground level this project has.

Is it ground level if you have to walk up stairs to get to it?

Yes? And darn... you quoted me before I edited (for which I say: damn that was quick, cuz I edited less than a minute after I posted)!

Sorry, I just randomly navigated back here and saw your comment. And I would go with no. Stairs and railings and shit have no place in a downtown environment (unless it's like a government building or something).

Well, unfortunately there are economic realities that exist that we have to deal with.

Plus, stairs are good exercise for all the folks who chow down on Torchy's Tacos and other...erm...healthy foods available in Austin. :)

As someone else pointed out, it's a floodplain issue. The ground floor has to be elevated above the flood plain. The Memorial Day flood shows why it's necessary.

All of the buildings along Shoal Creek are like this for just that reason - Monarch, Austin City Lofts, the forthcoming 5th & West. It's not because the developers think that stairs and railings are swell things.

Dirt moving this morning.

Well said. I've been feeling this a lot in the past few months, especially since returning from a second consecutive summer in the northwest. As Austin's skyline becomes more interesting, its "groundline" is becoming more off-putting, There is a warmth and welcoming feel to older cities where streets are lined with non-stop storefronts that are unbroken by driveways and other dead spaces. The retail spaces offered by these monoliths are cold and generic. What is being razed and phased out of Austin is taking all sense of place and culture with it, only to be replaced by mass-produced concrete and steel boxes that have no relationship to the stores that come to inhabit them. It's a big disconnect, and I'm increasingly feeling like it's time to disconnect from Austin and go hug trees in the NW with my fellow aging hippies.

I don't know that I agree with that assessment. Look at the street interaction with the JW Marriott. A block that was basically dead is buzzing with activity. Even 3rd @ Colorado which is just an office tower has boosted that area with a lot more pedestrians than before and the businesses along 3rd between Cesar Chavez and 4th is benefitting from it.

In fact if you consider that less than 10 years ago there was no 2nd Street Retail District, no street interaction of any kind in that area. When you consider that West End was nothing to what it is today. The Warehouse District was just starting to be up and coming, west 6th was still fairly quiet with few clubs and bars starting to pop up. There were not as many places to shop let alone small corner neighborhood stores every couple of blocks such as Blue Ribbon. Add all of that plus the 11,000 residents that call Downtown Austin home and it is more vibrant than ever before.

The challenge now is making sure our club districts stay in tact and I will be one of those pushing the city to make sure that is one of the top priorities.

But let's get real... Most (not all...), but most of what has been built and what is being built has been either on surface lots or on underutilized empty lots. In fact I'm suprised this particular project is stirring up a conversation like this. I mean there is nothing there at all and there was nothing but a parking lot to begin with before they tore it up. It's dead space sitting in an increasingly busy part of DT. It's not taking anything away.

The thing is Austin never really had non stop storefronts and tree lined streets at least since 1980 when I was born. Downtown wasn't much in the 80s and 90s. Wasn't until the 2000s that it began to transform and what we have now is 1,000 times more than we did then.

This. The "Market District" (where this project is located) was nothing but one car lot after another in the early 90s when I got service there. The "Warehouse District" was . . . derelict warehouses and broken sidewalks.

One can debate the merits of what's going up downtown, but I'm skeptical that what it replaced is, in most cases, worth waxing nostalgic about.

Anyone remember exactly what year those car dealerships went away? My grandma and uncle both bought Chevy's from Capitol Chevrolet in 1987 I remember. It couldn't have been long after that the dealership left for the motor mile.