If Austin’s downtown skyline needed a theme song, Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Want to Take You Higher” would be appropriate. Since the completion of the Frost Bank Tower in 2004, Austin has added more than 30 buildings of at least 200 feet in height. The Frost Tower’s reign as the city’s tallest building ended with the completion of the 360 Condominiums building in 2008, which was then supplanted by The Austonian in 2010. The city’s newest holder of the crown is the nearly completed Independent (aka “The Jenga building”), located at 301 West Avenue, which tops out at 690 feet and 58 floors.
But the Independent will likely be only an interim holder of the city’s tallest structure, as plans are afoot to construct a new tower on the northwest corner of 6th and Guadalupe, which would rise to 66 stories and 837 feet. The new building, currently called both 6th + Guadalupe and 600 Guadalupe, would combine office, residential, restaurant and retail space spread over its 1.1 million square feet. The block is currently occupied by an Extended Stay America hotel and a parking lot, and if the project came to fruition as planned, the new building would not only be Austin’s tallest, but would rank as the sixth tallest in the state—and the only one in the top 20 not in either Dallas or Houston.
But before ground can be broken, some conditions must be met with the city. Specifically, the shape of the tower will have to conform to the Capitol View Corridor restrictions, which preserve views of the Capitol dome. Also, on the northeast corner of the property is the James T. Brown House, built in 1858, which is part of the Bremond Block Historic District located just north of the planned building site. Since the house is included in the National Registry of Historic Places, the development would have to take steps to preserve and protect the structure. Stay tuned to see when this project might actually get off the ground.
If you travel a couple of blocks to the south, the city block located between Republic Square and the AMLI on 2nd high-rise apartment building (421 W. 3rd St.) will soon see the rise of The Republic, a new 37-story tower. The block has been leased by two Dallas development companies from the city for an estimated $430 million over 99 years.
With an official project address of 401 W. Fourth St., The Republic will overlook the newly renovated Republic Square Park and feature some 711,401 square feet of office space, as well as ground floor retail and restaurant space. Original plans called for residential space as well, but that appears to have been eliminated. Expected to break ground in 2019, the project’s completion date is projected to be in either 2021 or 2022.
And last, in February, Trammel Crow Co. broke ground on the project located at 601 W. Second St., directly across Shoal Creek from the new Central Library and on the site of the old Green Water Treatment Plant, which was decommissioned in 2008. The 35-story tower has been referred to as the Google Tower because the tech giant has already put the available office space under contract. Scheduled to be finished in mid-2022, the recently released designs have observers referring to it as the “Sailboat Building,” based on the shape of its east and west sides.