The ATX

Construction update of the 73-story, 1,022' Waterline apartment/office/hotel tower and the 594', 52-story Travis apartment tower:

If I had a nickel for every time ...

Austin has gotten too expensive for a lot of people, and the growth has shifted to the suburbs. Three of the five fastest growing cities in the U.S. (Georgetown, Kyle & Leander) are Austin suburbs. Plus the Texas Leg effectively stopped Texas cities from annexing populated areas in 2018.

Someone in Austin who has been working with the developer on financing related to their Austin Ritz project has been giving me updates over the past year. The Nashville project has always been their main focus, but it's not looking good. Their Austin project is looking even less good. They couldn't get financing when the economic outlook and the banking/financing situation was much better than it is now, so the chance of obtaining financing in the near future is dwindling. But the projects are not dead.

A couple of new renderings recently surfaced:

This is one of my favorite projects that hasn't started yet. The height and location will have a nice impact on the skyline. It's still crawling through the city approval process.

This one is at center-right: Link

Photo by Walkable on Instagram.

This one is going up fast now. Photo by Urbannizer at SSP.

Here's a view of 6xG on a dark and stormy night. Link

Gratuitous repost. This one is still moving through the city approval process.

Working on the sixth floor:

A zoning change request was filed this week for a 540' residential tower with a possible observation deck on top. This is the 10th tower planned for the South Central Waterfront on the south side of the river.

Here are some updated photos by Urbannizer at SSP:

The FAA filings indicating that this had become a supertall were filed in error. The new FAA filings have it as 603'. The approved elevations have it as 590', and that is the height I am going with. I will no longer be updating this project since it's not at least 600' tall. Plus it's all office, and financing has dried up for speculative office towers.

This project got a nice height bump. It's now 684', 57-stories. This week the Planning Commission approved the density bonus and zoning change needed for this project to move forward. This is one foot taller than a former Austin tallest building - The Austonian. Now this is just infill on a tiny lot. This is a screen grab of a rendering with the added floors from a Design Commission meeting:

LOL. Today was definitely a bad day for spam on UP. I banned 30+ spammer accounts which amounted to hundreds of posts. EDIT: Make that ~50. They keep coming.

I'll add that Austin has 65 with 11 more U/C that haven't topped out yet. I keep better track than Wikipedia.

Here's a recent photo. There are a lot of tall projects going up in this small area. The supertall is in the foreground.

Five FAA permits have been filed for the building. They indicate that this one has had a bump in height up to supertall status. This would be the 3rd announced supertall. Here's one of the permits showing a 1,072' height: https://oeaaa.faa.gov/oeaaa/external/searchAction.jsp?action=displayOECase&oeCaseID=575716235&row=214 Here's a rendering of the 616' height.

Here's a construction webcam that shows the Rainey St. Entertainment District. A lot of cranes in the area. Three that can't be seen because they are behind buildings are the ones for the Waterline supertall. https://app.oxblue.com/cameras/63470af65b7379ef94fd191cd5822e78?openlink=aecom/84East

The Austin tallest buildings and projects lists have been updated.

Progress update from this weekend. The blue cranes at far right are for the 52-story Travis tower. Full video:

Austin's light rail/subway plans will be severely curtailed just because building cost inflation is eating away at the approved funds for the grand plan while all the engineering & right of way issues are being worked on pre-construction.

This tower is going up where the three yellow cranes are at just right of center.