Austin Projects & Construction

[KevinFromTexas]

I know man, I can't believe all this. I love that the developers are deciding to increase the heights of these buildings for more density. Originally the first design proposal for AMLI was 7 floors. Which was to be 2 blocks over from it's twin. Their original lease with the city was to build 220 units there. Then AMLI said they favored a 14-story proposal for more density. Now, they're shooting for 17 to 18 floors, and 240 to 280 units. Incredible. If all goes well, in a year or two we'll be in the middle of the largest downtown Austin skyscraper boom ever. Especially in speaking about residential buildings. We've never had a residential boom like this in downtown. Most of our older residential buildings in Austin are few and far between. Most built in seperate decades. So we're really in for something different. I'm interested to see what this all will do to the downtown retail market. Hopfully we can get a retail building boom going also with all this new residential. The retail would also likely come in the form of some smaller midrises similar to Fort Worth's new Bank One Building.

One more little midrise. There had been a proposal by the Mexic-arte Museum to tear down their current building and build a new 7-story building. This is particulary interesting since they're located directly next to, (north), of the Frost Bank Tower. Some have questioned this since the building is historic. The museum argues though that there's little of the original building remaining because of all the remodeling jobs through the years. I haven't heard much else about this proposal. There's also two other small residential/retail projects along Congress. One would add 2 floors to an existing building. A local resident bought the building and is adding a 2 floor residence addition to the top. This will make the building around 50 to 60 feet tall. Another project farther to the south would tear down the old Wild About Music store and build new retail and residential space above. I think they were going for 6 or 7 floors. And it would be around 75 to 85 feet tall. Not much, but it's more density and the first of it's kind along Congress Avenue.