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The West Campus area of Austin — where most University of Texas students live although it's almost all privately owned — has seen a huge wave of development over the last two decades, and soon even more skyscraping towers could be built there.
City planners are crafting a new long-term plan for the area that could change the rules for developers.
In 2004, Austin created the University Neighborhood Overlay district, which allows for denser development in the West Campus area to increase supply of residential units and make it easier for UT students to find an affordable place to live. The creation of the UNO has spurred significant growth in West Campus, as Austin estimates the area’s population has grown beyond 28,000 residents and created at least 972 income-restricted bedrooms.
There are multiple 30-story towers built under the UNO. Those include the Waterloo Tower, which was developed by the LV Collective; the Union on San Antonio, developed by Greystar Real Estate Partners; and Icon at Austin, which was created by MDL Development.
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West Campus, seen here in the foreground with UT and downtown in the background, is one of the few niches in Austin where developers can go sky high.
Dave Creaney
Christopher Kott, the chief investment officer for LV Collective, said West Campus has drawn so much development because apartments in the area have consistently strong performance and usually have strong occupancy rates. He also said the UNO regulations have been a success for developers and people wanting to live in West Campus.
“(UNO) is one of the most successful districts that we believe in the entire country in terms of both affordability, density for student housing, and creating community outside of just housing,” Kott said. “With UT not having a freshman live-on requirement, being close to almost 54,000 students with less than 8,000 on-campus beds, it's extremely important that you have densification of that kind of corridor for students to get to.”
The city of Austin could soon update the regulations for UNO and West Campus. The effort would put in place better standards for residents in the area and possibly allow even denser projects. The city of Austin is in the process of creating the Central City District Plan, which would establish a new long-term planning and guiding vision for the future growth of Austin’s urban core.
Austin formally kicked off the effort to create the Central City District Plan last December and has spent 2026 gathering feedback and working to create the plan. A city-run website said the Central City District Plan could be approved by the Austin City Council sometime in the spring of 2027.
Austin City Council Member Zohaib “Zo” Qadri knows well the challenges that come with living in West Campus, as his council district covers the area and he used to live there. Qadri said he is supportive of the development taking place in West Campus in recent years but acknowledges there are improvements needed in building and property management regulations for West Campus, especially when compared to other parts of Austin.
Qadri said he hopes the Central City District Plan will result in something that encourages more growth in West Campus and the rest of Austin's urban core.
“I think we should embrace growth,” Qadri said. “I think it's the people that make Austin the special weird city that it is, and I think we should continue to be a welcoming city and not just say, 'Hey, we're at capacity; we don't need anything else.'”
More density coming to West Campus
There is more density planned for the West Campus area as a 300-foot tower site plan was filed for a 0.5-acre lot on West 22nd Street. At least one developer is interested in building a roughly 400-foot tower in the area, which would require a new maximum building heights there. Kott also said LV Collective controls another site at 504 W. 24th St. in West Campus that will be another student-housing-focused product.
Qadri said that new development in West Campus could support students wanting to live in the area as well as non-students that want to live near downtown. He notes that West Campus has a healthy amount of non-student, year-round residents.
The LV Collective believes not all parts of West Campus are well suited for tall, dense towers. Kott thinks the best place to add density in West Campus is the area between Rio Grande and Guadalupe Streets.
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Plenty of traditional housing can be found in West Campus — but not as much as their used to be.
Dave Creaney
Alan Ware, a real estate investor who also runs property management companies for West Campus area apartments, said there aren’t any easy opportunities to add new housing and projects to West Campus.
“You used to be able to tear down six houses and put in 100 apartments,” he said. “I think those opportunities are gone."
Kott agreed that it’s getting more difficult to find workable projects in West Campus. But he added that if the area was able to add more diverse types of real estate uses, like grocery stores, hotels and retail, West Campus could see even more interest from developers.
“We think more broadly there, and that there needs to be alternative uses outside of just housing … that brings that area to a 12-month, year-round operational area and continues to support the broader community of Austin,” Kott said.
Changes on the planning front
The areas of Austin that will be part of the new Central City District Plan include UT’s main campus, the West Campus area, downtown Austin and the South Central Waterfront area. Austin’s SpeakUp webpage on the Central City District Plan said this effort would improve how Austin deploys its resources and plans capital projects that would impact the area.
In 2025, the city of Austin also contemplated a proposal to update the planning and building height regulations for the UNO district that covers West Campus. That 2025 proposal could’ve increased the maximum heights for buildings in the UNO from 90-foot maximums to 600 feet, depending on the building's location. Currently, the maximum heights for UNO range from 50 feet to 300 feet.
The effort to update the UNO regulations was kicked off in April 2024 when the Austin City Council passed a resolution calling on city staff to update the area’s building regulations.
Austin ultimately tabled its efforts in 2025 so the city could better collaborate with UT officials over the planning efforts. After tabling the 2025 UNO updates, Austin rolled those efforts into the creation of the Central City District Plan.
Qadri said he didn't like that UT wasn’t more collaborative in the past about updating UNO because he thinks those updates need to be done sooner rather than later for the area to be improved.
“I'm a big proponent of the UNO update,” he said. “As a proud alum, I'm disappointed in UT kind of being a roadblock to a lot of that progress. My hope is that we're able to get it through. I think it benefits students. I think it's, you know, you look at the quality of life improving."
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An aerial view of West Campus.
Dave Creaney
UT officials have mostly kept quiet about what future development they’d like to see in the West Campus area. The university didn’t respond to requests for comments for this story.
Ware said he thinks the UNO regulations have resulted in a great amount of supply being delivered to the West Campus area and have helped temper rent growth for the area.
“The new supply really has helped,” Ware said. “I can't imagine what West Campus would look like if they had not passed UNO; it would just be a huge shortage of opportunities for students.”
But projects built under the UNO regulations aren’t perfect, as at one point these rules allowed for buildings to have buried beds, which are bedrooms that don’t have windows. In 2023, Austin moved to explicitly ban buried beds. Many UT students over the years have also complained about the living conditions of West Campus buildings and say their overall maintenance can be better.
“I had freezing water the entire first semester, and then it was burning hot the second semester,” said Lucia Olaechea, a former West Campus resident.
UT officials are making long-term planning efforts of their own. The university is actively creating a new master plan that will guide UT’s growth for up to 25 years. UT started the effort to create a new master plan earlier this year, and it will likely be completed sometime in 2027.
Brent Stringfellow, UT’s associate vice president for campus operations and planning, previously told the Austin Business Journal that part of the new master planning effort is accounting for Austin becoming a denser and more urban city.
Improving access is important for West Campus
Kott also said West Campus could be improved if it’s easier for residents in the area to access other parts of the city. That could make the area more appealing for non-students.
There is a major effort ongoing to improve access to West Campus.
The West Campus area could see a great amount of change from the planned 9.8-mile Austin light rail project, which is set to run along Guadalupe Street and be easily accessible to West Campus residents.
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An artist's visualization of the light rail system planned to pop up between West Campus and UT in the coming years.
ATP
Ware said the addition of the light rail to the West Campus area could make it easier for UT students to live in other places across the city. Qadri noted that West Campus deals with a tough parking situation and a limited supply of parking spaces, something the light rail expansion could alleviate.
The Central City District Plan should also account for how the Austin light rail will impact the West Campus area. Both Kott and Ware were supportive of the Central City District Plan update, and improving planning efforts for West Campus with its surrounding pockets would make the area better overall.
“We can't just put our head in the sand and ignore it,” Ware said.
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