Endeavor Gets Austin’s Approval for Massive Mixed-Use Project
Comprising six waterfront towers, the development will feature office, retail, hotel and residential components.
Image couresy of borevina via Pixabay.com
Austin’s city council has approved zoning plans to redevelop almost 19 acres of land on the south bank of the Colorado River/Lady Bird Lake, allowing developer Endeavor Real Estate Group to proceed with a six-building mixed-use, planned unit development.
The project, now known as 305 South Congress, was previously called the Statesman, after the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, which formerly occupied the property. The property’s owner is the Cox family, of Cox Enterprises Inc., the Atlanta-based conglomerate.
Plans at this point evidently call for six towers of up to 47 stories totaling 1.5 million square feet of office space, 1,478 residential units, a 275-key hotel and 150,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.
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In addition, the development is planned to feature several acres of new parkland and public space, including a 1.5-acre plaza and bat viewing area next to the Congress Avenue bridge, a redesigned waterfront hike-and-bike trail, and an extension of Barton Springs Road through the site.
An Endeavor representative told the Austin Business Journal he expects groundbreaking to be at least a year off and that Endeavor plans to complete 305 South Congress in three phases.
The process of getting to this point has taken years, according to local media, with some opposition to the project’s size, objections to the hotel and especially concerns over the amount of affordable housing. The city council eventually decided to apply Endeavor’s affordable housing obligation of $23 million or more to housing outside the PUD boundaries.
Simmering city
Central Austin has multiple significant projects in the pipeline right now, two of them by Related Cos.
A 106,854-square-foot boutique mass-timber office building is planned for 901 South Congress, not even half a mile south of 305 South Congress. The other Related project, One Ladybird Lake, is a 15-story, 475,000-square-foot office building with 16,700 square feet of ground-level retail.
In addition, Lincoln Property Co. and Kairoi Residential recently broke ground on what will be Texas’ tallest building: Waterline, a 74-story, $520 million tower at 98 Red River St. Besides 700,000 square feet of office space, the structure will include a 251-key hotel and 352 residential units on the top 33 stories. Kohn Pedersen Fox and HKS are the architects.
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