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51 minutes ago, Lobo said:

For the record, Chito Vela is the new one behind this con.  

What do you think the total skim off a project of this size could be for the grifters as a group... 2% - 3% ?

edited to add:

I’m not talikng about any of the principal contractors, just the politicos & cronies.

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Spoiler alert, it's all coming down.  Adler, Tovo, and Casar's proxy bitch "Chito"...are all in "Burn them, burn them all" phase right now.  Money grab is into overdrive.

Listen to me plainly.  Adler and Casar have been stealing from you.  If you voted for them, it's because you're stupid.  You're just as dumb as the people you insult on the other side. 

Of all the people that Casar could have chosen to succeed him, he went with a woefully under-qualified candidate who had no political experience in Vela.  That the man's chosen name is now "Chito" considering how many wisecracks you make about the man who looks like "Cheetos"...you're two sides of the same dipshit coin.  Go ahead and tell yourselves we're not living in a simulation, that Austin is where it is because of too many greedy developers and our leaders are benevolent saints.  You fucking children...

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On 4/8/2022 at 12:46 PM, DalTxHornFan said:

The initial cost projection was $5.8 billion, but new numbers add $4.5 billion to the cost of the Blue Line, Orange Line and underground tunnel.

Do you think we are done with cost overruns for Project Connect?  Light rail is nice but education should be a higher priority.

Just this first cost overrun is enough money to fix about all of the problems with Austin ISD.  I'm not talking water parks and planetariums -- hey we don't have the aspirations of La Joya. I mean modern buildings for all children that would replace buildings that are 50-70 years old.  Not just for the east side or west side ... this would fix the entire district.  Just this one overrun.

The $100 million for the tunnel extension on S. Congress would buy three elementary schools serving 1,800 kids.  Or, if you are into football, three stadiums or six indoor practice facilities (ten if you build them without walls) or two really nice performing arts centers.

Austin ISD has to come to the voters and justify new projects.  Project Connect does not.  Project Connect has a fixed number of cents of funding in the Austin city budget.  The money goes to the Austin Transit Partnership, governed by a five person board with only one or two elected officials.  There is no voter approval of projects other than the initial proposal.  If property tax values rise faster than 3.5% per year, the percentage of the city budget given to ATP will increase over time.  It is a money machine.

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On 4/10/2022 at 10:16 AM, Texas Jeff said:

Do you think we are done with cost overruns for Project Connect?  Light rail is nice but education should be a higher priority.

Just this first cost overrun is enough money to fix about all of the problems with Austin ISD.  I'm not talking water parks and planetariums -- hey we don't have the aspirations of La Joya. I mean modern buildings for all children that would replace buildings that are 50-70 years old.  Not just for the east side or west side ... this would fix the entire district.  Just this one overrun.

The $100 million for the tunnel extension on S. Congress would buy three elementary schools serving 1,800 kids.  Or, if you are into football, three stadiums or six indoor practice facilities (ten if you build them without walls) or two really nice performing arts centers.

Austin ISD has to come to the voters and justify new projects.  Project Connect does not.  Project Connect has a fixed number of cents of funding in the Austin city budget.  The money goes to the Austin Transit Partnership, governed by a five person board with only one or two elected officials.  There is no voter approval of projects other than the initial proposal.  If property tax values rise faster than 3.5% per year, the percentage of the city budget given to ATP will increase over time.  It is a money machine.

I mean, if we cut the amount of recapture property taxes leaving AISD in half we could pay for all that too. Kill the capitol view requirements and we could save 100s of millions. The state of Texas loves to fuck Austin up. I'd rather have good transportation and good schools. 

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The Robin Hood plan certainly needs to be tweaked/capped to prevent bankrupting districts like AISD and to restrict what the recaptured funds can be used for.

As far as the Capitol View Corridor, the feds didn’t care about blocking it from NB I-35 & Riverside when they built the central post office & federal building on 8th Street decades ago. Seems a bit outmoded now. 
Do any other state capitals require such a thing?

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Not a car in sight in that rendering.  I like the proposal from a space use standpoint.  But try and imagine what that little strip of South Congress is gonna be like from 7-9am and 4-7pm from the actual River to Music Lane.  Where the fuck are the gondolas!?!?!?!?!

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6 hours ago, Lobo said:

Not a car in sight in that rendering.  I like the proposal from a space use standpoint.  But try and imagine what that little strip of South Congress is gonna be like from 7-9am and 4-7pm from the actual River to Music Lane.  Where the fuck are the gondolas!?!?!?!?!

Everybody is gonna take the tube, silly.

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On 4/11/2022 at 9:55 PM, ztejas said:

Fuck anyone that voted for that stupid fucking proposal. 

"Hey maybe it won't be a complete disaster and come in under budget and ahead of schedule!"

I forget the poster that was a total shill for this stupid plan. He wad the RD of project connect. 
This plan was and is a disaster. 

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When the city (and 56% of its finest citizens) successfully forced this thing down our collective throats council kept touting how the feds would be kicking in the costs for *up to half of it* but at a number to be determine at a later date.  
 
Has there been any progress on that front or are we going to inevitably find out they’re going to only cover a couple hundred million of our soon-to-be $10B+ project?

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Looks like "The Republic" is set to finally break ground. Cool building, but I'm not looking forward to (what I assume will be) another blocked lane on Guadalupe for the next two years.

Anyone want to speculate on the "major tenant"? Tesla maybe?

 

First look: 48-story tower to proceed next to Republic Square
After nearly 5 years of planning, groundbreaking expected in Q2 '22 for The Republic

Another office tower is set to rise in downtown Austin, with an equity partner and an undisclosed tenant on board.

After years of planning, developers plan to break ground this quarter on The Republic. Lincoln Property Co. and Phoenix Property Co. are co-developers, while an April 20 announcement said Divco West Real Estate Services LLC, aka DivcoWest, is on board as equity partner. The building is set to rise 48 stories and total 833,000 square feet at 401 W. Fourth St., currently home to a surface parking lot just south of Republic Square. Floor plates are expected to average 29,000 square feet.

The "major tenant" was not identified although the announcement suggested The Republic “is prime for new corporate headquarters or companies looking to expand into the Austin market.”

"Everybody has seen the stats and the number of corporate relocations," said Seth Johnston, senior vice president at Lincoln Property. "I would just tell you that it’s going to be a mixed bag of [companies] existing in Austin currently, and relocation from outside of the state and outside the city."

Johnston declined to offer any further details "out of respect for the tenant's privacy."

The project is another sign of the continued thirst for downtown office space as companies contemplate return-to-office plans. Demand for office space in Austin resulted in a record high average asking rental rate for new, class A space during the first quarter of 2022, according to a recent report from CBRE Group Inc. At the end of December, Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc. leased the entire commercial half of the 66-story Sixth and Guadalupe tower — which Lincoln is developing alongside Kairoi Residential LLC and DivcoWest.

The building will feature 750-square-foot private terraces on every office floor, according to the announcement. A 50,000-square-foot amenity level on the 19th floor will feature a club room with a lounge and a bar, conference rooms, a fitness center and a sky terrace that overlooks Republic Square. The building's design is by Duda Paine, the North Carolina-based architecture firm that also designed the Frost Bank Tower.

Another planned amenity is a 20,000-square-foot public plaza at ground level, . The development team opted to include the plaza rather than build all the way out to the property line along Fourth Street, fronting Republic Square Park.

"The city and the county and the taxpayers paid a lot of money to redo that park, and it’s a huge attribute in the center of downtown to have true green space like that," Johnston said. "We made a conscious decision to pull the envelope of the building back 60 feet, by the whole width of the block, to create that."

The building with also feature touchless access and a private elevator for those who bike to work. The tower will have storage space for up to 350 bicycles, along with “a spa-quality locker room and showers,” according to the announcement. The Republic will have roughly 1,900 parking spots, Johnston said.

Harvey-Cleary Builders is the general contractor, HKS is the architect of record and the sustainability consultant, TBG Partners is the landscape architect, WGI is the civil engineer, BDD is the structural engineer and Blum Engineering is the mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer.

The project has been nearly five years in the making: Lincoln and Phoenix acquired a 99-year ground lease for the site in July 2017. The deal was worth $430 million in lease payments, ABJ reported at the time. Travis County bought the land in 2010 for $21.8 million.

In 2018, the building was conceived as a 37-story, 711,401-square-foot office tower.

Before Lincoln and Phoenix acquired the ground lease, a replacement for Travis County's aging Heman Marion Sweatt Courthouse was pegged for the site, though voters shot down that proposal in 2015. Instead, a 443,000-square-foot courthouse is rising at 1700 Guadalupe St.

Lincoln and Phoenix are both based in Dallas. The former has been extremely active on Austin's downtown development scene. Just two blocks north of Republic Square, Sixth and Guadalupe will soon be the tallest building in Austin. It is slated to be completed in July 2023, Johnston said. Meanwhile, it has proposed what could be the tallest tower in Austin and the state: a 74-story super tower at 98 Red River St. It is set to follow the towers rising on the west side of downtown — Johnston said the development team has a site development permit in hand, but they’ve got “a little bit of administrative work to do there.”

Phoenix has less of a local track record, but was involved in development of the Cole apartments on South Lamar Boulevard, ABJ previously reported.

San Francisco-based DivcoWest, meanwhile, last year purchased the 170,000-square-foot Bouldin Creek office building in South Austin.

Pandemic lessons learned during construction of Sixth and Guadalupe will be incorporated into Lincoln's newest tower, including touch-less tech, automatic revolving doors and improve air filtration, Johnston said.

“We learned a lot through that process at Sixth and Guadalupe that we were able to bring over to The Republic,” he said.

 

Also, austin.towers.net has a new story with some nice renderings. A sample:

LPC_Republic_Hero-scaled.jpg

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On 4/20/2022 at 8:52 AM, bolverk said:

Looks like "The Republic" is set to finally break ground. Cool building, but I'm not looking forward to (what I assume will be) another blocked lane on Guadalupe for the next two years.

Anyone want to speculate on the "major tenant"? Tesla maybe?

 

First look: 48-story tower to proceed next to Republic Square
After nearly 5 years of planning, groundbreaking expected in Q2 '22 for The Republic

Another office tower is set to rise in downtown Austin, with an equity partner and an undisclosed tenant on board.

After years of planning, developers plan to break ground this quarter on The Republic. Lincoln Property Co. and Phoenix Property Co. are co-developers, while an April 20 announcement said Divco West Real Estate Services LLC, aka DivcoWest, is on board as equity partner. The building is set to rise 48 stories and total 833,000 square feet at 401 W. Fourth St., currently home to a surface parking lot just south of Republic Square. Floor plates are expected to average 29,000 square feet.

The "major tenant" was not identified although the announcement suggested The Republic “is prime for new corporate headquarters or companies looking to expand into the Austin market.”

"Everybody has seen the stats and the number of corporate relocations," said Seth Johnston, senior vice president at Lincoln Property. "I would just tell you that it’s going to be a mixed bag of [companies] existing in Austin currently, and relocation from outside of the state and outside the city."

Johnston declined to offer any further details "out of respect for the tenant's privacy."

The project is another sign of the continued thirst for downtown office space as companies contemplate return-to-office plans. Demand for office space in Austin resulted in a record high average asking rental rate for new, class A space during the first quarter of 2022, according to a recent report from CBRE Group Inc. At the end of December, Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc. leased the entire commercial half of the 66-story Sixth and Guadalupe tower — which Lincoln is developing alongside Kairoi Residential LLC and DivcoWest.

The building will feature 750-square-foot private terraces on every office floor, according to the announcement. A 50,000-square-foot amenity level on the 19th floor will feature a club room with a lounge and a bar, conference rooms, a fitness center and a sky terrace that overlooks Republic Square. The building's design is by Duda Paine, the North Carolina-based architecture firm that also designed the Frost Bank Tower.

Another planned amenity is a 20,000-square-foot public plaza at ground level, . The development team opted to include the plaza rather than build all the way out to the property line along Fourth Street, fronting Republic Square Park.

"The city and the county and the taxpayers paid a lot of money to redo that park, and it’s a huge attribute in the center of downtown to have true green space like that," Johnston said. "We made a conscious decision to pull the envelope of the building back 60 feet, by the whole width of the block, to create that."

The building with also feature touchless access and a private elevator for those who bike to work. The tower will have storage space for up to 350 bicycles, along with “a spa-quality locker room and showers,” according to the announcement. The Republic will have roughly 1,900 parking spots, Johnston said.

Harvey-Cleary Builders is the general contractor, HKS is the architect of record and the sustainability consultant, TBG Partners is the landscape architect, WGI is the civil engineer, BDD is the structural engineer and Blum Engineering is the mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer.

The project has been nearly five years in the making: Lincoln and Phoenix acquired a 99-year ground lease for the site in July 2017. The deal was worth $430 million in lease payments, ABJ reported at the time. Travis County bought the land in 2010 for $21.8 million.

In 2018, the building was conceived as a 37-story, 711,401-square-foot office tower.

Before Lincoln and Phoenix acquired the ground lease, a replacement for Travis County's aging Heman Marion Sweatt Courthouse was pegged for the site, though voters shot down that proposal in 2015. Instead, a 443,000-square-foot courthouse is rising at 1700 Guadalupe St.

Lincoln and Phoenix are both based in Dallas. The former has been extremely active on Austin's downtown development scene. Just two blocks north of Republic Square, Sixth and Guadalupe will soon be the tallest building in Austin. It is slated to be completed in July 2023, Johnston said. Meanwhile, it has proposed what could be the tallest tower in Austin and the state: a 74-story super tower at 98 Red River St. It is set to follow the towers rising on the west side of downtown — Johnston said the development team has a site development permit in hand, but they’ve got “a little bit of administrative work to do there.”

Phoenix has less of a local track record, but was involved in development of the Cole apartments on South Lamar Boulevard, ABJ previously reported.

San Francisco-based DivcoWest, meanwhile, last year purchased the 170,000-square-foot Bouldin Creek office building in South Austin.

Pandemic lessons learned during construction of Sixth and Guadalupe will be incorporated into Lincoln's newest tower, including touch-less tech, automatic revolving doors and improve air filtration, Johnston said.

“We learned a lot through that process at Sixth and Guadalupe that we were able to bring over to The Republic,” he said.

 

Also, austin.towers.net has a new story with some nice renderings. A sample:

LPC_Republic_Hero-scaled.jpg

yep, that parking lot that has been there FOREVER is empty and the perimeter of the lot has gates/fencing. Its happening.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/11/2022 at 4:38 PM, DalTxHornFan said:

Nice job, errybody.

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/historic-landmark-commission-votes-unanimously-to-initiate-historic-protections-for-4th-st-gay-bars/

Voting to preserve a building that isn't historical and interfering in a deal that would have kept the ground floor (gay bar) tenant in place at a subsidized rent for 25 years.

Hopefully the COA city council will not go along with the historical landmark commission -- much like they did in overruling them on the Vince Young Steakhouse location.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Ghost of LL said:

So not downtown, but what's the latest on the Brodie Oaks redevelopment?  Is that going forward?

Nothing since this demonstration by the developers to show Kitchen & other Barton Hill NIMBYs how utterly ridiculous their concerns about height were.

https://austin.towers.net/dont-panic-but-heres-how-those-cranes-looked-at-brodie-oaks/?pro=caitlyn@towers.net

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/2/2022 at 4:40 AM, ztejas said:

Man... I don't like that location. That's a very classic part of downtown Austin that's being imposed upon by that monster. 

That makes me kind of sad. More so than a lot of the other ones. 

I really have to disagree.  I am a huge fan of this design, especially in that location.  It is idiosyncratic and helps to break up a lot of the blue-glass blocks that a lot of the new buildings look like.

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On 6/9/2022 at 7:09 PM, royiv said:

Well, it bizarrely comes from their Austin correspondent.  Which, I suppose, tells you all you need to know about the relationship between the two cities.  I cannot fathom the Austin American-Statesman having a San Antonio correspondent.

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It’s turned into a Dallas/Fort Worth rivalry, where Dallas people don’t care or think about FW, but FW people trying and convince everyone how much better it is than Dallas.

San Antonio people don’t like that the Texas triangle has shifted to Austin from SA.  They don’t like that Austin has got so popular and they’ve been relegated to 2nd tier status (even though they’ve still been growing steadily). For years they’ve complained about rich Mexicans coming across the border and buying vacation homes in their fancy neighborhoods (like Alamo Heights or Shavano Park) and now they complain that they are doing the same thing in Austin.

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On 6/9/2022 at 7:09 PM, royiv said:

it's actually pretty deal as it makes the 98 Red River Project even more of a reality - securing a major tenant. Will be the tallest in Texas.

https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2022/06/06/planned-74-story-development-downtown-get-luxury-hotel-1-hotels-downtown-austin-tx-rainey-district/7531601001/

A 74-story tower planned for downtown Austin's Rainey district has landed a luxury hotel brand for the project. 1 Hotels, which bills itself a sustainably focused luxury brand, will join the mixed-use development at 98 Red River St., along Waller Creek.

A 74-story tower planned in downtown Austin's Rainey district has landed a hotel tenant. 1 Hotels, which bills itself as a sustainably focused luxury brand, will join the mixed-use development at 98 Red River St., along Waller Creek. (Provided by Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, Lincoln Property Co.)

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For Travis County land parcels, asking prices are still crazy. 
The 50 acres that borders my 25 next to the CotA race track is going on the market listed at $9/sq.ft
That’s going to mess with my property taxes if it goes anywhere near the asking price.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
23 hours ago, Mittens said:

 

 

Watching this thing go way over budget and not be what it was sold to the voters is going to be very entertaining for those of us that don't live and pay taxes in Austin. For those that do live and pay taxes in Austin, I feel bad for you. It still blows my mind that a majority of voters thought it was a good idea to put CapMetro and the City of Austin in charge of a public works project of this scale.

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On 7/7/2022 at 2:44 PM, Mittens said:

 

 

No one is going to use that Travis Heights station.  There is zero density there.

To the north, there is one street and then the lake.  There are a few residential streets to the south, but the road leading south goes up a hill.  It's a very suburban-ish neighborhood.  They are putting a station there because it's a wide spot in Riverside drive.
 

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On 7/8/2022 at 2:47 PM, royiv said:

Watching this thing go way over budget and not be what it was sold to the voters is going to be very entertaining for those of us that don't live and pay taxes in Austin. For those that do live and pay taxes in Austin, I feel bad for you. It still blows my mind that a majority of voters thought it was a good idea to put CapMetro and the City of Austin in charge of a public works project of this scale.

Shit like this combined with the heat makes me want to get the fuck out of here. And you have a ton of dipshits still moving here making everything more expensive because they think it's mecca. 

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52 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

No one is going to use that Travis Heights station.  There is zero density there.

To the north, there is one street and then the lake.  There are a few residential streets to the south, but the road leading south goes up a hill.  It's a very suburban-ish neighborhood.  They are putting a station there because it's a wide spot in Riverside drive.
 

Yep if they needed one around there it should have gone on the East side of 35 where the apartments are where people can actually use them.

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