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Houndstooth Coffee Weaves Into The Fabric Of Downtown Austin

Julia Bass | August 15, 2013 |

[Editor’s note: Please welcome Julia Bass as a DAB guest contributor! Julia is a NYC native who recently relocated to Austin. As a newbie, she sees downtown through a fresh lens, and will be covering people, places, and events that we might have otherwise missed, or taken for granted. Please welcome Julia to the downtown community while she flexes her writing muscles for us! For feedback or questions, please contact her at JuliaBass28 [AT] gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @jul928.]

Artisanal caffeinery Houndstooth Coffee has opened a second location in Austin, anchored in the lobby of the Frost Bank Tower on Congress and 4^th Street. High quality coffee shops have woken up the city in a big way, and as downtown Austin grows, so does the availability of high quality coffee.

A Glimpse Of What Block 1 (Green Water) Will Look Like

Jude Galligan | August 15, 2013 |

It’s been a long time coming for the $500MM Green Water Treatment Plant redevelopment, situated along Cesar Chavez, bounded to the west by Shoal Creek, and to the east by Silicon Labs. We’ve stumbled upon good reason to be excited that development could begin soon.

Back in May, when a site plan application was submitted to the city, we shared with you that the first phase of the new Green Water development – a residential highrise known simply as Block 1 – was moving from possibility to reality.

greenwaterorientation — Block 1 is the NW corner of Cesar Chavez @ San Antonio Street

But I, along with nearly everyone else, was kind of confused about what exactly was being planned and how close the Green Water vision was going to match the original vision after a tree preservation snafu at City Council. This has been resolved and the plan is to incorporate the trees into the design.

Updated elevation drawings were submitted to the city which show a building that steps back from Cesar Chavez.

We can expect that the first phase will be a 38 40-story mixed use building with a total of 446 units. Majority one-bedroom, but included efficiencies, two-bedrooms and three-bedrooms, ranging from about 450 square feet to 2,000. It is anticipated these will be apartments (for rent).

greenwaterelevations — South and East Elevation Drawings for Block 1 by Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB)

At street level, we should see 14,000 square feet of retail, 15,000 square feet of restaurant space, and another 23,000 of office space.

The project is being developed by Trammell Crow and designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), an award winning architecture, interior design and planning firm with offices in Chicago and San Francisco, who has some very classy buildings all over the world.

If you spend some time perusing SCB’s design portfolio, I think you can start to feel some excited anticipation for this on the Austin skyline. No doubt, numerous tourists and passers by of what has become a fenced off lawn have wondered just what is going there.

While we can now see the profile the development, we eagerly anticipate some updated renderings.

DAB First Look: These Are The Top 3 Seaholm Intake Ideas You Voted For

Jude Galligan | August 9, 2013 |

Earlier this week, the City of Austin announced the Top 10 and requested public input to select the Top Three ideas for the redevelopment of the Seaholm Intake Building (that concrete bunker on the north shore of Lady Bird Lake by the train bridge).

Below are the Top Three finalists. Ostensibly, these are three designs the public most preferred.

Each of the winners get $5,000, but it is unclear if their ideas will ever become a reality. This fall or winter City Hall will issue an RFP for the project, and presumably these design winners stand a better chance than others of being selected. However, it doesn’t appear like this is going to go down like the Waller Creek competition did and these winning ideas are just that: ideas.

Below (in no special order) are the three winning visions, as selected by an anonymous jury of 10.

“Link” – Gumbully (pdf)

Team: Brendan Wittstruck, Justin Beadle, Philip Burkhardt, Roberto Jaime Deseda, Heath Henderson, Julia Weese-Young

link-gumbully-seaholm-intake — “Link” – Gumbully

“Lakehouse” – BOKA Powell + Design Workshop (pdf)

Team: Laura Bryant, Nathan Wilcox, Alex Ramirez, Sarah Simpson, Allison Moore Eric Van Hyfte, Kim Villavicencio, Philip Koske, Steven Moore, Tim Campbell, Mary Martinich, Conners Ladner, Jason Ferster, Magda Sayeg (local artist), Will Steakley (DEN)

lakehouse-boka-powell-seaholm-intake — “Lakehouse” – BOKA Powell + Design Workshop

“Intake” – Gensler Team George (pdf)

Team: George Blume, Brittney Couch, Jesse Adler, Vineta Clegg, Chris Curson, Adrianna Hong, Gerardo Gandy, Stacy Reed

gensler-seaholm-intake — “Intake” – Gensler Team George

Downtown News & Rumor Roundup

Jude Galligan | August 5, 2013 |

Seaholm Intake given new lease on life

This Thursday, City Hall will announce the top three submissions for the Seaholm Intake reuse project, which seeks to breath life into a behemoth concrete building on the north shore of Lady Bird Lake.

The top ten visions were announced just recently and KVUE did a nice job of compiling an in-depth 27-pic slide show of the ideas.

This is a project long simmering that is starting to boil. A big hat tip to Council Member Chris Riley’s office and the City Parks and Rec Department for keeping the heat on.

Look back here Thursday for the Top 3 finalists.

Travis County Courthouse update

Travis County Commissioners Court has decided how it wants to build a proposed new civil and family courthouse, Community Impact reports.

The project is controversial because the county paid a hefty sum for a parking lot, effectively removing one of the last remaining developable blocks for a mega tower in downtown from the tax rolls.

The county is going with the design-build route, which puts the risk on the county but allows it to retain more control of the project. The alternative would have been a public private partnership, which would have deferred risk, but loosened county control.

The county plans to float bonds for the project, and confirmed plans to go to voters for approval at some unknown date.

I’m not going to hold my breath until a new county judge is elected. Either Andy Brown or Sarah Eckhardt could change course if elected, and I’m not entirely sure the public will approve the project to begin with. If you’ve ever suffered through a Travis County Commissioner’s Court hearing, the court doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Dropbox moving into downtown Austin

Silicon Hills darling Dropbox is following other tech leaders and establishing another office in Austin, rumored to be downtown. Take that, Domain and Williamson County!

Two downtown developments gained site plan approval

When proposing a new project, the site plan approval period is the longest phase of city bureaucracy, laden with risks that can delay or derail a project. Getting the plans approved is a milestone.

Rendering of Capital Studios by Dick Clark Architecture

In July, Capital Studios — a smart project adding affordable multifamily to downtown — and a new hotel at at Fifth and ~~San Antonio~~ (Derp: San Jacinto) both received site plan approvals.

The next step, which can happen in relatively short order, is to get a building permit, and break ground.

Here’s to hoping the hotel changed the architectural design a little. You may recall a January post where I poked fun at it for being a carbon copy of another hotel down the street. You be the judge.

I-35 Cut ‘n’ Cap proposal getting national attention

I haven’t posted on the Reconnect Austin campaign to bury I-35 yet. For the record, I am for it, not the least for how it would open up the Waller Creek district in an unimaginable way.

If you’d like to learn more about the project, the national sustainable transportation advocacy blog Streetblog.net recently featured it.

Crowdsourcing A Road Map For Austin Bike Share

Jude Galligan | August 1, 2013 |

Austin’s bike share program is finally really beginning to roll. This is a monumental achievement for Austin’s urban core.

Later this year, the first 10 stations with about 100 bicycles will be in operation. The remaining stations will follow in Spring 2014. In total, the system will have approximately 400 bikes, 600 docks, and 40 stations.

This bike share system, long passed off as a novelty, will become integral to City of Austin decisions regarding mobility and transit policy in the urban core. I’ve been advocating since 2010 that the return on investment is huge. For distances of less than one-mile, these are cost-effective systems of getting urban-Austinites and visitors where they want to go. The system encourages users to spontaneously decide to “go further” than they would have otherwise gone on foot – an amazing recreational amenity for our city.

The city just launched a new website (http://www.votebikeshareaustin.com) soliciting feedback for where the public (that’s you!) would want to see bike share kiosks placed around the city and and a number of public engagement events are scheduled – including one today at City Hall. The nifty little website (produced out of the Open Austin collaborative) lets anyone suggest a location and others vote on the location.

Below is a screen grab showing where people have suggested locations. I’ve highlighted a few “no-brainer” locations with green dots.

Very exciting stuff.

Downtown Wayfinding – It’s All In The Design

Jude Galligan | July 30, 2013 |

As downtown residents, we generally know where stuff is, the direction the streets run, and we’ve developed a keen sense for about how far we are from any landmark.

Good wayfinding is an important asset for a city. It aims to expand localized knowledge into a form that visitors can use. It’s something that you notice when traveling in other cities.

Or, you find yourself cursing its absence.

A few posts ago, buried in a roundup post, I took aim at the Downtown Wayfinding Program – an effort to standardize street and directional signs – for ceasing to (publicly) display any progress. City staff reached out to kindly let me know the project was not “on ice” but working towards completing a graphic manual.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I surfed over to the project page recently to find a Wayfinding Master Plan has been published (pdf), which includes a project timeline that contemplates five phases between January 2014 – March 2016 and beyond.

When Staff presented their wayfinding plan to Council last winter, there was some controversy about Austin’s sexy parking “P”. The mayor, for one, was not a fan of keeping it weird when it comes to parking. (Mayor: I agree with you!).

“It’s supposed to be a signal that’s the same around the country, around the world,” Mayor Lee Leffingwell said of the Austinized logos, KUT News reported. “I don’t see anything to be gained by a little twist, any more than I could see a point of making stop signs triangular instead of octagonal.” [Zing!!!]

A couple of other points about the wayfinding report which I’m happy to see

According to the report, “the intent of the Downtown Austin Wayfinding Master Plan is not to add signage on top of existing conditions, but to remove and replace existing wayfinding signage to create an organized and comprehensive approach.” This is a signal that Staff is aware of the blight created by more street signs.
The batty street sign system for downtown, which sometimes show the street names, sometimes show the “historical” names, and sometimes show the honorary names will be standardized.

This Is The Biggest Transformation Facing Downtown Austin

Jude Galligan | July 24, 2013 |

You can clearly see from any of Austin’s view corridors the myriad cranes in downtown Austin, transforming the skyline. But, the biggest transformation facing downtown Austin is not the redevelopment of Seaholm, nor Green Water.

I’m thinking of the Dell Medical School and UT’s Medical District Plan. This plan developed within two years, seemingly from thin air, and is awesome in the “shock and awe” sense of the word.

We’ve seen “Master Plans” come, go, sit on the shelves of City Hall, but the UT Medical District is more or less guaranteed to happen in the next couple of years, at least the first phase. The UT system, the No. 3 richest system in the nation, will carry the brunt of development for Phase 1 of the master plan. I’d wager they aren’t dependent on lenders, credit markets, etc. when they (literally) have $1 billion of gold in the bank. That gold, by the way, represents just five percent of UT’s nearly $20 billion portfolio.

Officially, UT plans to open the medical school in the fall of 2016, while the planned opening of the hospital is January 2017.

Now, look at the Medical District plan as a catalyst for development near the adjacent capitol complex and Waller Creek. Things get really exciting.

I’m going to blog a few posts about this connectivity, in my best attempt to tie in the three plans and why they all are creating a nexus for something special to happen.

Let’s start by talking about what is in the works at UT in Phase 1.

UT Phase 1 plans

Phase 1 will be built while the existing Brackenridge hospital and Erwin Center continue to operate. Phase 1 will be jointly developed by UT and Seton/Central Health.

Parts of the first phase that will be developed by UT are:

A 75,000-square-foot academic/administrative building to serve as the medical school.
A 240,000-square-foot research building and vivarium. (If you’re wondering, “vivarium” is a fancy way of saying “animal research facility.”)
A 200,000-square-foot medical office building to provide space for specialty clinics, medical offices, hospital support, and clinical research.
A 1,000-space parking structure to serve the office building.
Meanwhile, Seton and Central Health will develop a new 480,000-square-foot hospital.

To facilitate development, the existing Penick-Allison Tennis Center will need to be relocated (sigh), as will the Centennial Park memorial features.

Additionally, Red River will be realigned between 16th and 15th street. If the glacially slow and problematic redevelopment of Brazos Street and other downtown streets is any indicator, that is the most likely part to delay UT’s plans. Assuming the university twists arms at City Hall to put that on the fast track, there is still no telling what sort of headaches and potential delays that lay in wait under the street.

You might say: “This is basically UT and not downtown.”

I’d counter that 2/3 of this plan exists within the boundaries of Downtown Austin, adjacent to the capitol complex and Waller Creek. The Medical District will spur more development for services and living options supporting Austin’s burgeoning medical industry.

Optimistically, I think this is “too big to fail.” Exciting stuff, to be sure, and phase 1 is just the start.

Roundup: Cesar Chavez As Freeway, Future of Children’s Museum Site

Jude Galligan | July 18, 2013 |

No way, Cesar Chavez as a freeway? Way.

The thinking back in the ’60s was that Cesar Chevez (née 1st Street, née Water Street) should be an expressway.

Check out this map making the rounds on Twitter, recently. Note that the red dash lines are planned expressway lanes, just like MoPac. (Keep in mind, the waterfront wasn’t what it is today, and Lake Lady Bird had only just formed after the completion of Longhorn Dam in 1960.

Office tower proposed at 5th & Colorado

The ABJ reports the surface-parking-lot-cum-mobile-food-vendor site is slated to be a 9 story office tower, being developed by Lincoln Properties. What’s not clear is where the 6 stories of parking will go. Is it a 15 story building? Is parking below ground? Nobody seems to know the height.

Plans murky for former Children’s Museum site

I posted recently about a zoning change filed on the block surrounding the 56-story Austonian skyscraper last week, where developers are seeking a change in zoning that would allow them to build taller.

The Travis House Ghost Door

Jude Galligan | July 16, 2013 |

Have you seen the mysterious Travis House monument door at 18^th and Guadalupe downtown?

From the look of it, the former Travis House site is in total stasis, but the sidewalk has been given the Great Streets treatment, even if for just half a block.

A little history: the Travis House was building constructed in 1945 as a 30-unit multi-family building, among whose tenants included a secretary for then-Congressman Lyndon Johnson. Within five years of being built, the building was converted into a hotel, named Hotel Guadalupe. In 1956, it was purchased by the YWCA and became one of the few places where black UT students were allowed to rent rooms while going to school on campus, according to city records.

Fast forward to the 1990s, and the YWCA chapter fell into bankruptcy and lost the building, at which point the Travis County Justice System converted the building into a halfway house for recently released prisoners. Predictably, that sparked a public safety outcry, due to the proximity to young UT students, which led to a period of limbo and vacancy for the Travis House. There were a series of low-profile, unsolved arsons in the building while it was generally used as a flop house by the homeless, amid growing clamors to destroy the building. Finally, in 2010 one of the fires found fuel and resulted in a two-alarm fire and the building was taken down.

As a testament to that thrilling history, the door reconstruction stands there now, with the original carvings above the entrance and reclaimed bricks from the demolition. A fairly large plaque is posted on the south side.

The historical significance of the building is debatable; however, the aesthetic effect of the monument, especially at night, is undoubtedly intriguing.

A Development Map of Rainey Street

Jude Galligan | July 9, 2013 |

News and stories about Rainey Street’s neighborhood growth is often scattered and disparate, so we thought it would be helpful for the casual development-watcher to see everything on one map.

The image below shows what is coming down the pike. You can click on the map to get a full size version. DAB will continue to update the map as we get new intel.