A 0.5702-acre parcel (24,840ft) development site in Downtown Austin’s Rainey Street neighborhood has been placed under contract. The site, 68-74 Rainey Street, is owned by Equity Secured Capital LP and comes with an asking price of of $2.5MM. It consists of three adjacent lots, one is double size, so the total Rainey Street frontage is equivalent to nearly four lots. At first glance, it doesn’t appear that power-line easements or Waterfront Overlay District create any encumbrances. Survey of the site after the jump. [Read more…] about Large Rainey Street Development Site Under Contract
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DON’T MISS IT!!! Capitol Tree Lighting, Holiday Sing-Along & Congress Ave Stroll: SAT 12/4 @ 6PM
UPDATE: This is last year’s post. This year’s Holiday Stroll is on Saturday the 3rd!
Once again, KUT and the Downtown Austin Alliance will bring you the annual “Holiday Sing-Along and Downtown Stroll.” It’s now become an annual tradition. Last year an estimated 8,000 people attended. This year, with the beautiful weather expected Saturday evening, maybe 10,000 or more?
It’s all happening Saturday, Dec. 4th. KUT’s John Aielli will be on the south steps of the Capitol building leading Christmas carols beginning at 6PM. That is immediately followed by the lighting of the Capitol Tree on 11th Street, at the head of lower Congress Ave.
Then everyone takes a leisurely stroll down “The Main Street of Texas”, Congress Avenue where many businesses will be open late and have decked their halls and display windows in holiday style. One sidewalk-adjacent travel lane on each side of Congress will be closed to vehicle traffic from 11th to 6th streets to accommodate the crowds.
Along the Avenue you’ll discover loads of wonderful live entertainment in office building courtyards and on street corners. Refreshments, children’s activities, shopping, a Bicycle Zoo parade and more are also part of the merriment that will go on for a couple of hours.
There will even be a Santa’s Workshop. And the jolly big fella himself will be found holding court in the lobby of One American Center at 6th and Congress.
As long as you’re in the area, also make a point of taking in a few blocks of Historic East 6th Street too (before the Saturday night revelers show up after 9pm). East 6th looks lovely this time of year with holiday street decorations its entire length, the majestic Driskill Hotel all dressed out (don’t miss a peek inside), and many local businesses are showing their spirit.
What a fine night for a carriage ride around Downtown, too! The horses usually line up in front of the Driskill. (That’s a great photo-op, by the way.)
It is also requested that you share the spirit of the holidays by dropping off a jar of peanut butter at the downtown Christmas tree for Caritas to distribute to those in need.
This event is made possible by generous sponsorships from Whole Earth Provision Company, Goodwill Industries, The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum , Ballet Austin, InStep, Louis Shanks Home Furnishings.
(Compiled from information from the Downtown Austin Alliance and KUT. Capitol and caroler photos courtesy of the Austin American-Statesman. Driskill lobby photo in HDR courtesy of Trey Ratcliff, www.stuckincustoms.com)
Major New Live Music Venue Coming to 6ixth Street
In case you missed the news this past week, there is a significant new music venue slated to open New Year’s Eve on East 6th Street. Here’s a link to the Austin360 story by Michael Corcoran. 
It’s called “The Stage” and is operated by a family out of Nashville with solid experience in producing quality live music venues there where they have four: The Stage on Broadway, Legends Corner, The Second Fiddle and Nashville Crossroads.
The Sanderson’s have been in Austin quite a bit over the past year checking out the scene and trying to find a fresh angle to success in our highly competitive market. They finally settled on 508 E. 6th, the largest single-space building for something like this on the street and former home to Bourbon Rocks and Fat Tuesday. (Maggie Mae’s is larger in overall square footage but it is chopped up into essentially four separate spaces on two levels.)
Longtime building owner Terry Boothe, who owns several properties on East 6th, had loads of offers from the typical fare of 25-cent-jello-shot bar operators. But he held tight for over two years without a tenant in order to bring a quality live music operator back to 6ixth and thus help the District’s quest to upgrade the quality of visitor experiences to be found there. The Downtown Austin Alliance (DAA) and 6ixth Street Austin property/business owners association assisted in landing this deal.
Live music is supposed to be presented on pretty much the same schedule as the Nashville clubs: starting as early as 2:00 in the afternoon on Mondays-Thursdays and at 11:00am on Friday-Sunday. That should provide a welcome flow of new work for Austin’s large and talented musician community. The Stage will reportedly also serve food too.
My only caveat is that I hope The Stage will program live music with distinctly Austin and Texas-centric flavor, not a heavy Nashville bent. If you take a look at the websites for the Nashville clubs, the offerings seem a tad “formulaic” — pretty much the same stuff done under four different names, not unlike the tight-jeans-and-cowboy-hat processed “country” music that Nashville itself often cranks out. I hope the Sanderson’s and manager, Brandon Reineke, challenge themselves further in what they do in Austin.
While country is certainly one of our basic music food groups down here, the great country-flavored sounds coming out of Texas span so much greater breadth…quickly flowing into country rock, roots rock, folk, bluegrass, swing and so much more. Even Willie regularly crosses into jazz and blues in his sets regardless of what type of club or festival he is playing.
Would you label Robert Earl Keen, Joe Ely, Jimmy Lafave, Ray Benson, Carolyn Wonderland, Marcia Ball as “country”? Hardly. Yet these are the sorts of all-star Austin acts that I hope will be regularly presented as headliners on the stage at The Stage — for a decent ticket price and full-priced drinks — to provide visitors to The Live Music Capital with a truly memorable show to savor when they head home.
However it shakes out, The Stage is clearly a welcome addition to the music offerings Downtown and on East 6th. As a business owner just a few blocks west of the new venue I can attest that the area is streaming with people all day long these days, 7 days a week, looking for things to do and seeking that globally heralded Austin vibe and live music reputation. Between the Convention Center, all the great Downtown hotels, and our many new urban residents, business has never been better.
Now…if only we can lure Antone’s back to East 6th where that legendary venue began, then we’d really have some live music anchor tenants to brag about again! Gotta work on that some more. 🙂
Austin Bike Share Doesn’t Exist. It Should!
[Thanks to Charley Ayres with the Round Rock Chamber of Commerce for the above pic!]
Just got back from Minneapolis as part of a delegation from the Austin Chamber of Commerce’s annual InterCity visit. One of the most impressive city amenities in Minneapolis is a robust and professionally operated bike share system. The system is called Nice Bike and you’ll find stations scattered throughout the urban core, located around destinations people need/want to get to.
It was around this time last year, when traveling in Montreal, that I was first introduced to a fully functional bike share system. That system was called BIXI, but it was the same bike design used in Minneapolis. The system works insanely well. You can become a member, or pay-as-you-go. The three-geared bikes are comfortable and well maintained.
The most important element of these systems a critical mass of stations. A successful shared bike system is analogous to a network that increases its utility as more nodes are added. Place the stations in places where people need them. The more stations the better.
A shared bike system could help solve some “last mile” challenges facing mass-transit. The productivity of a shared bike system for residents, workers, visitors is potentially leaps and bounds more cost effective than buses for last mile transit. As such, I believe a shared bike system should be injected into Austin’s mobility planning.
Just as importantly, a shared bike system is a superb recreational amenity for the city. Imagine how useful this could be for visitors to Austin! Don’t rent a car. Rent a bike! Make it leisurely.
It was fortunate for supporters of this system that so many decision makers were on this trip. CM Riley, CM Cole, CM Morrison, and Mayor Leffingwell were all in attendance in Minneapolis, and hopefully returned more informed about the potential of a bike share system in Austin. Below is a map I quickly created that shows general destinations where anyone could pickup or drop off their shared bike.
A Different View
As we walked out of Frank last week, I couldn’t help but notice this view. There’s nothing particularly dramatic about it. What is interesting, to me at least, is that for years this view didn’t exist.
201 E 5th Street obstructed the view to 5th Street from this block of Colorado St. That building was recently razed, and was replaced with a surface level parking lot. Eventually, the “1 Hotel” is supposed to occupy the land once they find the capital to commence with site permitting and construction.
Until then, the open space replaces a vacant and ugly building. I’m usually against taking down a building of higher and better use and replacing it with a surface level parking lot. But in this instance I’m ambivalent. Now, the “energy” at 5th @ Colorado, a gateway into downtown Austin’s Warehouse District, just feels good… better.
It’s more inviting to see through to Colorado St, rather than walk around what was a “dead” building. A completed “1 Hotel” would energize the district, but until that time, this surface level parking lot is better than what it replaced.
-Jude