Quote:
Originally Posted by wwmiv
Personally, I think it should slowly get taller the further from the river you get, that way you maximize the number of buildings with a river view.
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Logically, though, developers were going to build along the waterfront to take advantage of the views in what had been until then an unproven market. It's kind of hard to imagine now, but it wasn't that long ago that Austin didn't have anything in the way of residential high rises. For more than 40 years, Austin only had one residential building over 200 feet. The Westgate Tower which was built in 1967. It wasn't until 2008 that two taller buildings were built that finally beat it. There was technically a taller residential building, the Dobie Center built in 1972, but it's always been a student dorm west of UT. Today, the Westgate Tower is Austin's 26th tallest residential building. It went from being our tallest residential building from 1967 to 2008 to being passed 25 times between 2008 and today. A few of these that I'm counting as passing it are doing site prep and are under construction, so barring some reason they aren't completed, that's what the ranking is.
Anyway, I agree with you about wanting taller buildings as you move north away from the river so that each row of blocks has a chance at seeing the river. That would be ideal, but not likely. I also like that idea because the view from the river will reveal more buildings in a layered manner rather than simply a wall of glass. Also, the elevation is higher as you move away from the river. The sea level elevation change between the river and the UT area is upwards of 140 feet. So the farther something is built north of the river the taller it'll appear on the skyline. In fact, when you view the skyline from the north sometimes even with that wall of 400 foot buildings they sometimes don't really appear all that tall compared to buildings in the foreground even if they're considerably shorter.