Search Results for: legacy

Legacy On The Lake – first tour with video

Jude Galligan | November 13, 2008 |

I received an email last week that the new Legacy On The Lake residences were open for business, ready to lease, and offering tours of the building. This would be a good opportunity to preview a building that seems to have been under construction forever. So, I grabbed my camcorder and headed over. Located at 43 Rainey street, the Legacy is the third building, along with the Shore and Milago, to join the Rainey Street neighborhood in the past three years. With 31 floors, the Legacy towers over the lake. The views are what you would expect at that height – amazing.

Videos after the jump!

Where Is All The Micro Housing?

Caleb Pritchard | April 1, 2016 |

The casual suburban view of Downtown Austin real estate is likely limited to the newsworthy towers – hotels, offices, condos. The tall glassy stuff that has been radically reordering our skyline with a seasonal regularity. But there’s far more to downtown than just towers.

78701 is arguably Austin’s only truly self-sustaining urban ZIP code, and has a rainbow of housing options to please a variety of tastes. Yes, there are shiny condo towers, but take a closer look, especially in the northwest quadrant of downtown (aka. Original Austin), and you’ll find a rich mix of mid-rises, duplexes, garage apartments, townhomes, victorian homes, a Governor’s Mansion, and more.

surprising to many casual observers, downtown Austin has more than just tall towers

One conspicuous absence, however, is that increasingly popular urban diadem known as the micro-unit development. [Read more…] about Where Is All The Micro Housing?

Maufrais

Jude Galligan | November 19, 2015 |

[Editors note: I’ve always wanted to know the story behind the ubiquitous “Maufrais” stamped into the sidewalks of downtown Austin. Rob Hafernik wondered the same back in 2008. Below we’re reposting Rob’s article, originally published at Texas Escapes, and reveals some history about one of Austin’s most long-lived and mysterious brands… a legacy that began over a century ago.]

I’m a curious kind of guy. When I walk the dog, I wonder about the things I see along the way. Everyone in Austin is familiar with the word “Maufrais”, but almost no one knows what it means. There are poems about it, and blog entries wondering about it. There are even people who think “Maufrais” is as mysterious as crop circles.

The reason for this mystery is that the word is stamped into half of the concrete in Austin. Just in the space of one good dog walk, I see the word a dozen times or more. Now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that it must be the name of a concrete company, but enquiring minds want to know more. These days, enquiring minds are as addicted to search engines as Wimpy is addicted to hamburgers.

[Read more…] about Maufrais

Downtown Austin Alley Activations – Open House for Rainey Alley

AG | March 27, 2015 |

A little over two years ago today, we wrote about a very cool Alley Activation project done by Art Alliance Austin. In the article, we said that many cities around the world are starting to embrace alleys as more than just loading / unloading and trash dumpster zones. We think that for certain alleys, the concept of revitalization and activation makes a ton of sense.

One such alley in the Rainey district of downtown Austin is getting a second look, compliments of the City’s recent acquisition of funding to pave what’s currently little more than a dirt passage littered with dumpsters behind all of your favorite Rainey Street bars. The alley goes from River Street to where the construction for the Millenium Rainey apartments begin (Millenium Rainey received an alley vacation so they were able to build right over the alley).

downtown-austin-rainey-alley-today — Rainey Alley today, looking north

Millenium Rainey Dead-ends Rainey Alley — Millenium Rainey dead-ends Rainey Alley

We think this is very exciting for the neighborhood not only in the broad sense of representing “out-of-the-box” thinking to maximize public space within the limited confines of an urban area, but more practically and specific to the location – we think this activation may have the effect of “bringing in” the businesses on East Avenue that currently face I-35, encouraging more serviceable and integrated uses to make them fit into the neighborhood they inhabit, rather than being hunkering warehouses with chain-link fences, or out of place and isolated highway bars like the ill-fated Agora.**

The establishments on East Avenue are technically part of the Rainey Neighborhood, but many couldn’t feel more incongruous with their surroundings.

Legacy leather bar Chain Drive, currently sharing 84 East Ave with 2 other concepts

stunning industrial warehouse use, Loomis at

love those chain link fences at 76 1/2 East Ave!

We encourage those interested in upgrading the alley to come to the Mexican American Cultural Center at 600 River Street on On April 7, from 9am-7pm. The City is inviting the public to come and give input on current uses of the alley and solicit constructive ideas for future uses that also preserve the “essential service functions” of the alley. Feel free to share constructive ideas in the comments below, too. We’ll be dropping by the Open House and are happy to share any cool ideas on our readers’ behalves!

More info here.

**Legacy leather bar Chain Drive is currently residing in part of the structure at 84 East Avenue today. It was formerly tucked away and hidden in plain sight on Willow Street off of Red River before being pushed out – likely due to parcel consolidation for the Waller Park Place / Waller Center. Even though it’s not a bar we personally visit, we’d actually like to see it stay around for posterity, if nothing else.

Big News for Rainey Street District

Jude Galligan | May 3, 2013 |

By now you might have read the breaking news that the Sutton Co. is proposing to build a three-tower complex (including a 65 story tower!) across the street from Iron Works BBQ, with a tower that would be taller than the Austonian.

What you may not realize yet is that Rainey Center, the dual tower project that was supposed to encompass up to 50 stories each, and include up to 1,000 apartments and condos, next door to the Lustre Pearl in Rainey Street, is dead as envisioned… BUT will be replaced by a new concept.

Wally Scott and Mac Pike – aka the Sutton Co. – have sold the 2-acre site to subsidiary of the Houston-based Dinerstein Companies. This information was buried in the last paragraph in a blockbuster story the Statesman published about a larger than life deal around the block.

According to information posted over at the SkyscraperPage forum, alleged to be taken from city records, Dinerstein is scrapping the dual tower concept for an eight-story mixed use building with an internal parking garage.

That’s a major let down, IMO. Austin has no shortage of squat beige buildings. Hopefully the new proposal will retain some ‘wow’ factor.

Maybe it just didn’t make sense from a traffic management standpoint to have that much of a draw right off the Cesar Chavez and I-35 access road, and in any case enables Sutton Co. to get capital for an even more inspiring, legacy project.

Still, once people start absorbing this information, it could instill a sense of skepticism about the Sutton Co.’s latest proposal. It wasn’t long ago – after all – that the Statesman broke news about the Rainey Center project (now Dinerstein is reducing the scope), just like it is doing now with the Waller Center project. Even the Statesman’s Shonda Novak — perennial cheerleader of Austin development — put a caveat in the first line her story about Waller Center of “if it happens”.

The details on the Waller Center project are as follows:

$500 million project
3 acres at East Cesar Chavez and Red River streets near Waller Creek.
Condos/Hotel tower – 65 floors
Apartment tower – 35 to 45 floors
Office tower – 17 to 20 floors
Proposed groundbreaking – mid to late 2014.

We’d love to see this one happen and reflect the vision below. It would be a huge boon to downtown, specifically the Waller Creek District. Cheers to ambitious thinking.