Cielo to Break Ground on Downtown Austin Tower

Austin’s CBD will sprout new high-rises, with locally based Cielo Property Group planning to break ground on the first of two adjacent buildings slated to rise on a city block east of Frost Bank Tower.

After recently securing site plan approval from the City, the developer expects to begin construction on the Perennial in late summer. The office development will rise 46 stories and total 750,000 square feet, including a 37,000-square-foot retail portion on the first three floors.

Aimed to achieve both LEED Platinum and Well Platinum certifications, the office project is expected to come online in late 2025. Cielo Property Group has selected AQUILA Commercial to market Perennial, which will occupy half a city block along Fourth Street, between Brazos Street and San Jacinto Blvd.

The development team includes Perkins & Will serving as architect, Michael Hsu Office of Architecture as interior design and ground architect, Garza EMC as civil engineer and JE Dunn Construction as general contractor.

A closer look at Perennial

The 720,000-square-foot office segment on 24 floors will feature floorplates between 29,000 and 32,500 square feet. The planned tower will also offer 17 levels of parking, with a ratio of 2 spaces per 1,000 square feet, along with a 200-spot bike parking.

Perennial will feature more than 100,000 square feet of landscaped open-air spaces, such as a public paseo on the ground floor, with a 28-foot waterfall spilling into a sunken garden, as well as balconies ranging between 1,200 and 4,500 square feet on every office floor. The biophilic designed tower will be crowned by a 30,000-square-foot Sky Garden on the 20th floor, offering a 360 degree views of downtown and encompassing a gathering area, a rock garden, a reflection pool, private meeting rooms and a walking trail.

Peas in a pod?

Cielo Property Group acquired Perennial’s 0.81-acre site, encompassing three adjacent parcels, last year. In early 2020, the company also purchased the northern end of the downtown city block, along Fifth Street. The developer initially considered another office project for the northern site, that can potentially hold a high-rise as large as 886,200 square feet, but it is currently planning a mixed-use tower with residential and hospitality space.

The Austin metro is still on top, with a nation-leading office pipeline relative to stock. As of January, the market had more than 9 million square feet of office projects under construction, representing 10.3 percent of total inventory, well above the national average of 2.2 percent. In February, Inspire Development broke ground on Pearson Ranch, a $2 billion mixed-use development with 2.6 million square feet of office space.