[AustinGoesVertical]

I’m actually pleasantly surprised with this. It’s massive but it doesn’t look bulky. They easily could have capped this one around 500 ft and not done a crown, so cheers to them for going that extra mile (or rather 80 feet haha). I think I might nickname this one “The shard” - I know there’s a building by that name in Paris. This one somewhat resembles that, although it’s more truncated. It still reminds me of a crystal that shoots out of a rock and I think if they light that vertical strip down the whole side of the building, this will look pretty stunning.

I have to say, the office market is clearly alive and well in Austin. We haven’t even talked about HQ2 recently, but there’s a lot of square footage being delivered here.

When I moved to Austin 6 years ago, I always thought of downtown as a place with state and municipal jobs, a little banking, but mostly considered the core to be more focused on residential and hotel programs - the idea that people lived downtown but worked in corporate tech campuses on “silicon hill”

Now, we’ve got a true financial district developing. Greenwater has Deloitte, CBRE, Facebook, and Google while Indeed has and will have an even bigger presence downtown. Think about all that is in the pipeline.

- Block 71 (Indeed)
- 300 Colorado (Parsley)
- 600 + Guadalupe
- The Republic
- 405 Colorado
- Block 185

These are all significant towers. All are pretty sleek glass ones too, so Austin is going to have a very professional and financial vibe pretty soon. Not a sleepy daytime city anymore.