Unico Completes South Austin Office Building

Bouldin Creek. Image courtesy of Unico Properties

Unico Properties has completed Bouldin Creek, a 165,000-square-foot, five-story office building in South Austin. Co-developers Manifold Real Estate and OakPoint Real Estate acquired the land in 2018. The development team also included White Construction Co., Nudge Design and Michael Hsu Office of Architecture and Studio8 Architecture. OakPoint is set to manage the building.

Located at 2043 S. Lamar Blvd, on 4 acres, the development is within 2 miles of Interstate 35. The asset is also 3 miles from downtown Austin and 10 miles from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Bouldin Creek has four elevators and flexible workplace floor plates that average 50,000 square feet. Common-area amenities include a fitness center, bike storage and outside terraces. A coffee roaster recently signed a 2,500-square-foot, long-term lease on the ground level.  

The developers are pursuing LEED Gold certification for the project, which features 2 acres of green space and charging stations for electric cars. Bouldin Creek has also partnered with Downtown Austin Alliance’s Writing on the Walls program to commission four murals throughout the property from local artists.

Unico’s multiple-state portfolio includes office, mixed-use and multifamily properties. Apart from Austin, the company’s footprint encompasses assets in Portland, Ore., Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Nashville, Tenn. In January, the partnership of Unico and Partners Group topped out on a 211,066-square-foot office/life science development in downtown Seattle. Completion is scheduled for this summer.

Austin’s strong office pipeline

The Austin office market continues to be a magnet for projects, as developers are encouraged by a wave of major corporate relocations, particularly from California and New York. According to CommercialEdge, the metro’s office-using employment recorded a 6.4 percent uptick year-over-year through November 2020, in contrast to the national average, which decreased by more than 3 percent.

At the end of last year, the metro had more than 8 million square feet of office space underway, mirroring the fact that the rapidly growing Texas capital has the potential of becoming an increasingly important regional business and tech hub. Austin’s office pipeline represented 10.8 percent of total stock, putting the metro on the national podium, second only to Charlotte (11.5 percent), CommercialEdge data shows.

Last month, a Stonelake Capital Partners affiliate announced plans to develop a 50-story tower in downtown Austin, comprising residential and Class A office space. Completion is scheduled for 2025.