[GoldenBoot]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

I don't know how many high rises those other cities truly have, but I did a count recently of Austin's - including built, proposed and under construction/site prep, and we're at 272 high rises at the moment. That puts Austin above Seattle, Minneapolis and Detroit in SkyscraperPage's database. I don't doubt that Seattle and Minneapolis at least have more than us, but we have enough now that if we count all of them it's possible to pass some cities that haven't done complete counts of theirs. I never would have imagined that would be possible, but it is now. Not only that, but we have about 100 more high rises on that list than Las Vegas, Baltimore and San Diego have. Cities like Portland, Pittsburgh, Nashville, New Orleans, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Cleveland and possibly St. Louis and Kansas City have long been in our rear view mirror for total count and we've passed a few of those in the height ranking, too. I'm not competitive about either. It's just a bit surprising to see who we're running neck and neck with these days. I never would have guessed it in the past, but here we are talking about it. We're even closing in on Dallas in the 400 to 500 foot range, which is insane.

*Disclaimer - by the way, if you go look at Austin in the SkyscraperPage database to verify what I just said and note that we're only at 143, that's because I haven't finished adding all of the buildings yet. I have my own database in OpenOffice that I've been working on for over 20 years. Every height either came straight from the elevations, an email from the developer or architect, or I measured it with Google Earth when those other sources weren't available.

Thank you for all your hard work, Kev. Out of curiosity, when obtaining data from developers and/or architects, have you confirmed that the heights provided to you were from the lowest entrance to the pennicle of said tower? Most of the time, they'll provide you the height from average/median grade level. Just look at the most recent article regarding Block 185 - where the height of the tower was quoted as being 575'. We've already measured that tower as 589' based on the most recent elevations and taken from lowest entrance to its pennicle.

Thanks again, Kevin!