Austin | ATX Tower (325 West 6th) | 675 Feet | 58 Floors | T/O

[Austin1971]

Originally Posted by geckos_rule

well i'm not saying we immediately need exactly what nyc and chicago have. But i was pointing out that unique buildings in different architectural styles are what makes those the best skylines in the world imo. Austin could very well have the same thing, on a far lower scale, and accomplish our version of that. But instead, it's designs like this, that look like they bought the blueprints in a 12-pack at costco.

g

[Geckos_Rule]

Originally Posted by Austin1971

Got it. You prefer the drive thru bank and sushi joint.

In a vacuum, of course I'd prefer this tower over a lot of different things, including what's there now. But the problem is, that once this gets built, that's it for the next 50-ish years at least. So it's less about comparing A to B, but more about comparing what's planned here now, to what could be there instead.

[Sigaven]

Originally Posted by Geckos_Rule

Well I'm not saying we immediately need exactly what NYC and Chicago have. But I was pointing out that unique buildings in different architectural styles are what makes those the best skylines in the world IMO. Austin could very well have the same thing, on a far lower scale, and accomplish our version of that. But instead, it's designs like this, that look like they bought the blueprints in a 12-pack at Costco.

Different architectural styles come from different time periods. Those city skylines you are thinking of were developed over decades and decades. Austin's current skyscraper boom reflects the time period they were built, which is in the last 10-15 years, and the design trend EVERYWHERE of the last 10-15 years has unfortunately been blue glass boxes.

If Austin has another skyscraper boom 15-20 years from now, hopefully archiectural tastes will have changed and we can see some differing texture.

[MichaelB]

Originally Posted by Geckos_Rule

it's designs like this, that look like they bought the blueprints in a 12-pack at Costco.

[urbancore]

Not sure what I think about this.

The more I think about it though, I do believe these will be forever referred as our "twin towers". Not sure if I like that or not. Being across the street (couple hundred feet maybe?) from each other tells me, from a distance, they will look like 2 buildings of the same development.

They will be forever linked.

Regardless.....build it....asap. And I agree, the architecture is boring. Almost as boring as an urbancore post. But as I've said for years, we get value designs because we don't have money in this town that NYC, SF, Seattle, LA, etc, or the "slave labor" of the Middle Eastern cities. Not till condo median sale prices well exceed $1000/ft for basic downtown condos, will you see a "starchitect" design some outrageous design. Someone has to pay for it. No point in paying a big name, big bucks to design a boring blue box (starchitects probably won't do it anyway for reputation sake, I would guess) They tend to design buildings that need specialty materials, and builder expertise that is also hella expensive. We don't have that kind of demand yet....though I do think we can get there.

The other way I see us getting a SERIOUSLY cool tower, would be if Dell or some other homegrown company wanted a signature tower in their hometown. A Sears Tower if you will ("What you talkin bout Willis"...sorry...It will always be the ST to me)Those type companies have the money and I think could benefit from the urbanist movement of the last 20 years. Google's tower is amazing for Austin, but it's more clever than groundbreaking, and it's a bit too short....though the location makes up for that. It will always be front and center in most shots of Austin. 6X, BBVA and the others standing tall like the back row guys in the school photos with the hot chics down in front. And, I'm cool with that.

[papertowelroll]

Originally Posted by urbancore

Not sure what I think about this.

The more I think about it though, I do believe these will be forever referred as our "twin towers". Not sure if I like that or not. Being across the street (couple hundred feet maybe?) from each other tells me, from a distance, they will look like 2 buildings of the same development.

They will be forever linked.

Regardless.....build it....asap. And I agree, the architecture is boring. Almost as boring as an urbancore post. But as I've said for years, we get value designs because we don't have money in this town that NYC, SF, Seattle, LA, etc, or the "slave labor" of the Middle Eastern cities. Not till condo median sale prices well exceed $1000/ft for basic downtown condos, will you see a "starchitect" design some outrageous design. Someone has to pay for it. No point in paying a big name, big bucks to design a boring blue box (starchitects probably won't do it anyway for reputation sake, I would guess) They tend to design buildings that need specialty materials, and builder expertise that is also hella expensive. We don't have that kind of demand yet....though I do think we can get there.

The other way I see us getting a SERIOUSLY cool tower, would be if Dell or some other homegrown company wanted a signature tower in their hometown. A Sears Tower if you will ("What you talkin bout Willis"...sorry...It will always be the ST to me)Those type companies have the money and I think could benefit from the urbanist movement of the last 20 years. Google's tower is amazing for Austin, but it's more clever than groundbreaking, and it's a bit too short....though the location makes up for that. It will always be front and center in most shots of Austin. 6X, BBVA and the others standing tall like the back row guys in the school photos with the hot chics down in front. And, I'm cool with that.

Unfortunately I don't think that homegrown company exists. Dell is a pretty frugal company, not to mention based in Round Rock, so they would definitely not build a signature downtown tower! The best possibility is/was Indeed, but they (intelligently, if I'm being honest) chose to go with a multi-site strategy, and as such their signature downtown building is "only" block 71. Google's building will be awesome, even if not super tall, and, if current growth trends continue, I could maybe see a Facebook or Amazon building their own version of that at some point. In the end I expect that residential buildings will remain our tallest for the foreseeable future.

[wwmiv]

We do have two signature towers already, one of which is one of the last designs of an actual starchitect (Google Sail and Frost). I think that major expansions from outside players with signed pre-leases for major square footage, rather that spec towers, are our most likely to emerge with a third signature tower.

I’d look to Amazon in the future, an AT&T Tower, Salesforce, 3M, Intel, for major expansion offices that could (not will) be in signature towers or nearly so.

Or relocations of companies to Austin that match better with Austin’s economic strengths than their current home and that aren’t especially attached to their current home either:
a relocation of iHeartRadio from San Antonio, for instance.

There’s also the possibility that one of our local companies could blow up. Frankly, I’d love to see Tito’s or one of our breweries turn corporate. That’d likely be a signature skyscraper if they upscaled massively their distribution and capacity quickly and needed the office space.

We’ve had multiple European tech companies relocate their NA HQs from SF to here specifically because it’s cheaper and they have greater overlap by two hours of the work day back home. If somebody bigger does the same, that could result in a good tower.

[Austin1971]

[QUOTE=wwmiv;8781985]We do have two signature towers already, one of which is one of the last designs of an actual starchitect (Google Sail and Frost). I think that major expansions from outside players with signed pre-leases for major square footage, rather that spec towers, are our most likely to emerge with a third signature tower.

I

[Jdawgboy]

The article said they are building similar sized warehouses around the country so it's not going to be very unique after all if that's the case.

[Austin1971]

Originally Posted by jdawgboy

the article said they are building similar sized warehouses around the country so it's not going to be very unique after all if that's the case.

o

[AustinGoesVertical]

Tito’s Vodka is already estimated to be worth $4.4 Billion and Mr. Beveridge owns it 100% outright. Only way it could go corporate is with massive capital infusion to boost scale, but it’s actually still growing. Even so, it has under 50 corporate employees right now. I agree, that would be awesome to see but I don’t think it would fit with the culture nor would they ever have the business ops to support significant office space DT sans conglomerate investment.

Best bet is Amazon as an existing company, but I’d love for one of a myriad of existing Austin eco-system start-ups to make it big and support such a space. There’s this one company recently funded called Coder that feels like it could be on the verge of something far bigger.

Hey, maybe Jump (Uber), Spin, Skip, Scoot, Bird, Lime, and Lyft all want to use that insane venture money and consolidate ops into one large HQ tower to house “The Scooter Group, Inc.”

Imagine a “Scooter-Shaped” design with the “deck” being about four stories of “dockless” parking on a full-plate slab divisible by brand. Then 10-floors of corporate apartments (about 250 micro-units) with an outdoor amenity space and a real pool deck. It would also have exclusively stationary e-scooter treadmills and docked e-bikes in the workout room.

The first two floors of the “Bar” structure could feature “The Handle Bar” — a millennial tech-centric bar with some authentic Texas design elements, which would be at the base of the vertical portion — a sleek and thin 80-floor tower of creative office space for each brand’s individual hub.

The crown you ask? The initial spokes of the handle bars with a spotlight-style lighting element. Finally, the mechanical penthouse is masked by a lucite-facade with a QR-Code design etched into the glass. It of course would be lit up and have a wide spectrum of colors.

Funding: Scooter Group Inc. — SPV Real Estate Fund

Developer: World Class Capital Group (Nate Paul finally did it guys!)

Architect: Undisclosed

From Press Release: “Austin is already the de-facto Scooter Capital of the World and we realized there’s a lot of cannibalism between our different brands — which are really just white label infrastructure made from Segway-Chinese manufacturer
Ninebot. With the same exact business models, margins, marketing, pain points, and operations, VCs started to suggest taking the Match [Group] approach — owner of almost every dating site in North America — and consolidating. So that’s what we did with Scooter Group. Austin’s the perfect place to build our HQ, although San Francisco made a competitive play. We say we solve the “last mile” problem, so we envisioned a mile high building, which would have included office and multi-family well beyond our needs under The We Company brand, who was actually workshopping the subsidiary “We Scoot, LLC“ before it’s demise. Not that some of our funding doesn’t come from SoftBank, so it’s a little touchy subject, but anyway, this is going to be a World Class Tower, which shouldn’t surprise the local real estate community given our developer. This new holding company is on the verge of a record-setting 250B IPO, so the timing couldn’t be better. It’s simply going to be iconic and we couldn’t be more excited to get on the road, or should I say sidewalk, with construction.” — Scooter Haven (CEO of Scooter Group, Inc.)

[ILUVSAT]

^^^Uber is already building a huge "hub" center in Deep Ellum (Dallas).

[KevinFromTexas]

I don't have a problem with the design at all, and not just because it's tall either.

Look, we can all agree that Dallas' skyline is great as a whole, correct? Was every building that happened there in their boom years during the 80s as cutting edge as Fountain Place was? No, but the designs they did get were a good collection of architecture that look good together. Other than Fountain Place, I'm not sure they had anything more groundbreaking than that, even though I'm a big fan of their towers. Bank of America Plaza is easily one of my favorite buildings anywhere even though its design was pretty typical for post-modern architecture.

The same goes for Houston. Together, the towers that form their skyline make for a cohesive look, but singularly, few of their towers are standouts. Even the I.M. Pei designed Chase Tower is pretty basic and featureless. The two standouts that come to mind for me for Houston is the Williams Tower (or Transco Tower if you refuse to call it that) and the Bank of America Center.

I think we're experiencing something similar in Austin. We can't and shouldn't expect every design to be some crazy experiment and study in geometric shapes, but we will get a few lookers that will change things greatly. For me, those will be The Republic and the Block 185 Tower. I also think it's unrealistic to assume that those two buildings will set some new standards of ground breaking designs for us. Did Fountain Place take Dallas' architecture in a new direction? Not really, singularly it did, but it had little influence on having anymore overly unique towers that could compare to it. And, yes, the irony isn't lost on me that a residential developer (AMLI Residental) is currently topping off a tower across the street from Fountain Place that takes its cues from that building. Still, Fountain Place was completed over 30 years ago, so I'd say it's about time.

Also, something else to consider is that modern architecture these days is rarely daring. There are only a handful of cities doing it, and they are leaders in architecture and skyscraper construction today anyway. Maybe the beef we have with the designs aren't quite the fault of the architects or a tasteless design commission and city council, but rather the architecture of our era, which is pretty basic for economic and simplicity sake.

Anyway, build it already.

[clubtokyo]

I guess I am in the minority, I like the design and would love to see it built!

[ahealy]

But can we get a render with our new twin towers???

[the Genral]

Originally Posted by ahealy

But can we get a render with our new twin towers???

That would be nice.

[We vs us]

Here're some of the latest 6X shots that catch the BBVA lot or show a similar straight ahead view as the BBVA rendering.

You're right, Syndic. BBVA will be a lot less girthy than 6X.

[Syndic]

If this, 6X, and The Republic get built and the post office lot gets a massive building, this area will become Austin's central "cluster" of high rises that you see in other cities' skylines.

[ahealy]

Man, that girth! phew

I realllllly wanna see what BBVA will look like with 6X

[Austin1971]

Originally Posted by syndic

if this, 6x, and the republic get built and the post office lot gets a massive building, this area will become austin's central "cluster" of high rises that you see in other cities' skylines.

h