Ok I swear I'm not trynna troll here, but hear me out. I went to Dallas this weekend for a wedding and stayed at the Virgin in the design district. In short, Austin really needs to model itself from Dallas AND CATCH UP.
The architecture is of course old money / oil / tech boom money, but good god it's so much better than here. Even the nearby (new) residential towers didn't have parking podiums, but instead, separate garages that can someday be torn down/converted if necessary. New construction was also INTERESTING and not value engineered to remove the smallest details or use the cheapest materials. I so wish our skyline were similar and I'm nervously holding my breath for Waterline to be the main stunner of TX....but we'll see about that one. The lighting on their towers actually looked classy and glitzy, compared to our mostly lazy approach.
Speaking of detail, every sign or neighborhood has some flair or identity to itself. I think we're onto a good start with SOCO, 2nd street, 6th / RR, but we need to flesh out a more cohesive USE for our different hoods. I'd personally love to see a design district here or something similar for trade businesses.
Lastly, this one comes with time, but it was so amazing to see taller buildings outside of downtown. We attended a wedding in University Park on the top floor of some office tower and I felt so envious and wish we had something like that in Uptown/Domain. Austin deserves multiple skylines throughout the city and I feel we're on the way as the NIMBY tinfoil-hat neighborhood association grip loosens from CC.
PS. I think you can boil my SSP gripes and wishes down to a few things:
More creative new builds, quality build standards and way better lighting
No more parking podiums
An actual art museum
Project Connect
An observation bar/dining establishment
Thanks if you made it this far !