AUSTIN | Waterline (98 Red River) | 1,022 Feet | 73 Floors | U/C

[N90]

Originally Posted by the Genral

I must be thinking of a different Atlanta, the one with the BoA Plaza, my overall favorite, SunTrust Plaza, One Atlantic Center, Peachtree Tower, and another favorite because its round, the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, plus almost forty, 400+ towers, eleven of which are over 600'. I've been to Atlanta and because of that one visit, I love the downtown skyline, food, sports teams and the State of Georgia in general. So I have to assume you were presenting, tongue in cheek. You have a ton of skyscrapers that I consider signature towers and can only wish we had more of here. Glad to have you moving here, in fact proud you chose here, but don't look in your rearview mirror when you leave Atlanta, you might decide to stay. I would be happy with ANY one of your top ten over this proposed tower. If we are drooling over the design because its a super tall, its like me going to a football game because I love football, but don't really care for either team playing like when my wife makes me take her to a Longhorn game. It lessens the enthusiasm somewhat. I can't root for this tower because it so tall, but I won't shoot it down either. Its just not what I envision our first and maybe only supertall should look like. Just me I suppose.

Context is everything. None of what you said has a thing to do with my post at all.

What I said is that I live in Atlanta and that we don’t build any tall towers here anymore. I’m aware that Atlanta has tall buildings but those were all built many decades ago in the past...

Sorry if I came across as rude.

[davidberko]

Originally Posted by N90

Bro context is everything. None of what you even said has a thing to do with my post at all.

I said I live in Atlanta and that we don’t build any tall towers here anymore .

I didn't misunderstand. I agree with you on Atlanta's skyline. It's weird. Indeed they have a lot of tall buildings but it's too spread out to look remotely impressive. I lived about six hours from there in the panhandle of Florida. Not many American cities are doing what austin is where there's so much new construction going on. Especially for a city Austin's size it's stupid impressive. And that's coming from someone who's lived all over, including chicago, home of the skyscraper. Austin has a lot to be proud of.

[the Genral]

Originally Posted by N90

I live in Atlanta and we don't get tall buildings here. We get short highrises and midsize highrises at best. We don't get things like Texas Tower (Houston), 6XG (Austin), and this.

Our best towers are the cutesy and pretty short ones. Great for what they are but they lack any kinda height that can get one excited. The only "tall" towers we hear about here are fake projects that don't exist or the ones the city built over a decade or many decades ago.

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...ostcount=14009

But Austin? Austin's different. I like it, I'm moving to Austin in February.

Ok, I re-read your post and in your reply to mine, you embellished your post. But in doing so, I get your point. I didn't read that you aren't getting any new buildings to the scale we are. You didn't say that. And I was being complimentary to what is already in place. I spent many weekends for many years in NYC and been to Chicago and Boston many times, so my opinion on other city skylines come from seeing the real deals. We are a few years away from me qualifying ours to the higher ranks. 6x, Republic, and this supertall should clinch it for me, plus the projects in Rainey. Fwiw, the bulk of what I say in my almost 4000 posts are just my personal opinions and interpretations, often going against the grain and against popular opinion and I'm sure I come off as ignorant sometimes. But hey, I gotta be me.

[Echostatic]

Anyway, pulling this back to 98 Red River... We might be getting a supertall! Here! In Austin! Using ILUVSAT's height estimate, we could have the 18th tallest building in the country. The tallest building outside of NY/IL/CA. Here. In. Austin. What a marker on the map this would be for us, along with 6XG, BBVA, 4th & Brazos... this city is on fire.

[SproutingTowers]

Originally Posted by ILUVSAT

Maybe. As of their February 2020 listing, The Post Oak Hotel at Uptown (Houston) and Hotel Emma (San Antonio) are the only AAA 5-Diamond hotels in Texas. Additionally, Forbes 2021 Travel Guide ranks The Post Oak Hotel at Uptown (Houston) and The Ritz-Carlton (Dallas) as the only 5-Star hotels in Texas.

Austin has some ultra luxury hotels and curious where these rank in stars.

Four Seasons
Fairmont
The Line
Van Zandt
Hotel ZaZa
Austin Proper
Commodore Perry

[N90]

Originally Posted by the Genral

Ok, I re-read your post and in your reply to mine, you embellished your post. But in doing so, I get your point. I didn't read that you aren't getting any new buildings to the scale we are. You didn't say that. And I was being complimentary to what is already in place. I spent many weekends for many years in NYC and been to Chicago and Boston many times, so my opinion on other city skylines come from seeing the real deals. We are a few years away from me qualifying ours to the higher ranks. 6x, Republic, and this supertall should clinch it for me, plus the projects in Rainey. Fwiw, the bulk of what I say in my almost 4000 posts are just my personal opinions and interpretations, often going against the grain and against popular opinion and I'm sure can come off as ignorant sometimes. But hey, I gotta be me.

I apologize for my wording earlier. I could’ve done a better job saying towers built recently in Atlanta in the last decade or since the Great Recession.

I have no ill will towards you or your posts. But please understand, even a tower like 44 East that now gets overlooked in your development pipeline in Austin would represent the tallest thing built in other major cities. That’s where Atlanta is with skyscraper construction. We have plenty of cute and pretty 200-400 footers in the pipeline but just too bad their height is nothing substantial though.

Atlanta needs to fill in the gap in the skyline between DT and MT with talls.

[The ATX]

Originally Posted by SproutingTowers

Austin has some ultra luxury hotels and curious where these rank in stars.

Four Seasons
Fairmont
The Line
Van Zandt
Hotel ZaZa
Austin Proper
Commodore Perry

Over the past few years I've seen several Austin hotels get 4.5 star ratings including the Foo Fighters's favorite - Saint Cecilia. Maybe there is a big difference between 4.5 & 5 stars?

[GoldenBoot]

Originally Posted by SproutingTowers

Austin has some ultra luxury hotels and curious where these rank in stars.

Four Seasons
Fairmont
The Line
Van Zandt
Hotel ZaZa
Austin Proper
Commodore Perry

Those are not considered "ultra luxury" by the industry. They simply are not. The only chain (or management company) to be considered that highly is the Four Seasons (as they are widely considered a Top 10 chain/management organization in the world). However, Austin's version is not their highest rated.

[GoldenBoot]

Originally Posted by The ATX

Over the past few years I've seen several Austin hotels get 4.5 star ratings including the Foo Fighters's favorite - Saint Cecilia. Maybe there is a big difference between 4.5 & 5 stars?

Rankings by Trip Advisor, Expidia, Yelp, and the like are not the standard in actual star rankings. ILUVSAT listed the two widely recognized lists considered to be the gold standard by the hospitality industry.

[KevinFromTexas]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

Well, that's good news. I had trouble reading the numbers on the elevation. The top one is pretty easy to read - 1,409 feet. Of course, that's the above sea level height. The number at the bottom is more difficult, but I'm a nerd, so I got out my magnifying glass like Inspector Gadget to read it. It's still a little hard to read, but I think the number is 408 feet 3 inches. So, that gives us a height there of 1,000 feet 9 inches. BUT, the height on the elevation is only to the main roof and there is some height above that. I think the highest point of the crown/mechanical roof appears to be around 50 feet above the main roof. So I'm thinking the height is likely close to 1,050 feet.

Originally Posted by ILUVSAT

Again...not to be nitpick here...but, HAIF listed the height at 1,474' MSL. Thus, this baby would be closer to 1,066' tall.

I was looking at the article that Towers.net published today, and they had a better larger version of the elevation I was looking at. That 408 foot 3 inch sea level elevation I was having trouble seeing is actually 608 feet 3 inches. That height isn't the ground level height, it's to a point on the podium roof. So, we'll likely have to wait to have an actual height until we can view the site plan and elevations.

https://austin.towers.net/downtown-a...lyn@towers.net

That makes more sense to me anyway as I was thinking that 408 feet seemed a little low for the sea level elevation of the site. Most of the lowest sea level elevations around downtown near the river hover around 445 feet above sea level. I should have figured. The river (water surface level) itself is around 423 feet above sea level. So, going by that, I think the height will probably be around 1,025 feet or so give or take a few feet. Either way, we're still looking at a new tallest for Texas, and it'll be about 100 feet taller than Dallas' tallest. Crazy.

[shoreditch]

The more I look at it, the more it looks like a Lake|Flato-type building, which I usually love.

This thing is gorgeous. Really hope it gets built 'as-is'

[The ATX]

It's 1,021 feet according to the original source at HAIF. Urbannizer asked him to clarify the height.

[the Genral]

Originally Posted by The ATX

It's 1,021 feet according to the original source at HAIF. Urbannizer asked him to clarify the height.

Maybe they could add a spire to take it to 1100'.

[We vs us]

Originally Posted by GoldenBoot

Rankings by Trip Advisor, Expidia, Yelp, and the like are not the standard in actual star rankings. ILUVSAT listed the two widely recognized lists considered to be the gold standard by the hospitality industry.

There's a difference between diamonds and stars. Diamonds are a ranking by AAA, and stars were a Mobil Travel (now Forbes) designation. So far as I know we only have 4 diamond hotels in Austin (no 5 diamond), a handful of 4 star hotels (no 5 stars) The starred hotels are Four Seasons, Archer, Proper, and Fairmont. Granduca gets an honorable mention.

Hard to say if there's a market for 5 star luxury here. Much of what Austin is known for is a specific kind of high-gloss casual service -- which is unique and becoming reknowned around the world -- but also doesn't necessarily fit the classic definitions of luxury. Will people come to Austin looking for something that's kind of intrinsically NOT Austin?

Interestingly enough, the next generation of towers that we're discussing (even aside from this particular one) are clearly indicating we're a much higher profile city than even maybe we think we are. Not just in how each tower looks separately, but also in the aggregate -- that there's THIS much activity going on -- during a PANDEMIC -- suggests something bigger is happening in Austin. I feel like we've lept over some major stages of development in the span of a couple of years and are in "global asian city" territory all the sudden. So . . . just as a speculative amenity, maybe a 5 star is one of the things we'll need by the time our next transition period is done.

[Urbannizer]

Tallest building in Texas
Second tallest mixed-use building west of the Mississippi
Third tallest building west of the Mississippi

[East7thStreet]

Originally Posted by Urbannizer

Tallest building in Texas
Second tallest mixed-use building west of the Mississippi
Third tallest building west of the Mississippi

And the Wilshire Grand in LA has a giant antenna that otherwise would leave it shorter. (Same with the 1023' Atlanta building (90' antenna)).

[GoldenBoot]

Originally Posted by We vs us

There's a difference between diamonds and stars. Diamonds are a ranking by AAA, and stars were a Mobil Travel (now Forbes) designation. So far as I know we only have 4 diamond hotels in Austin (no 5 diamond), a handful of 4 star hotels (no 5 stars) The starred hotels are Four Seasons, Archer, Proper, and Fairmont. Granduca gets an honorable mention.

Hard to say if there's a market for 5 star luxury here. Much of what Austin is known for is a specific kind of high-gloss casual service -- which is unique and becoming reknowned around the world -- but also doesn't necessarily fit the classic definitions of luxury. Will people come to Austin looking for something that's kind of intrinsically NOT Austin?

I know how the diamond/star system works. May I suggest you go back and read ILUVSATs post - to which my comment was referring.

Additionally, 5-diamond/5-star is not all about "luxury." It's about services and amenities (in addition to the subjective "luxury" aspect). Furthermore, landing a 5-anything does not mean it's going to be a big-named management company. It's more than likely going to be a smaller company.

Austin is absolutely ready. In fact, I know of a few, eyebrow-raising, small/boutique hotel management companies who have been sniffing around for some time (all run 5-diamond/5-star locations around the globe).

On a side note, Austin is home to two of the Top 10 destination spas in the U.S. (both Top 25 in the world).

[N90]

Originally Posted by GoldenBoot

On a side note, Austin is home to two of the Top 10 destination spas in the U.S. (both Top 25 in the world).

Which two?

[SproutingTowers]

The Rainey Street District and South Central Waterfront District are separated but will be connected with a new pedestrian bridge. This will allow people to easily cross the river to access their jobs, convention center, restaurants and hotels. So having a new hotel here will get business from both the north and south of Lady Bird Lake. A huge benefit for the new hotel should be the view from the new bridge day/night with a spectacular of downtown and the bats.

[gillynova]

I'm a couple of days late on this one but WOW, this will make Austin MORE WELL KNOWN across the country once this is built out. Thank god for a new proposal during covid times. Hopefully this moves forward FAST. I'm loving the height that this city is getting throughout its downtown core



Seeing this one illuminate orange during the night time when there's football... wow