frost bank

A 15-story office tower with ground floor retail is being proposed for the north east corner of West Cesar Chavez Street and Lamar Boulevard.

The new project, to be located between the Gables apartment and Seaholm, would be the first new office project constructed in the downtown core since the Frost Bank tower was completed in 2001.

The developer behind the new project, Capital City Partners LLC, recently completed Capstar Plaza, a 115,000-square-foot, eight-story, office building at the southeast corner of MoPac Expressway and Fifth Street.

Over the last few weeks, the Austonian has been slowly dismantling its crane, signaling the beginning of the final phase of construction.

With the exterior shell complete and the elevators now fully functional, the Austonian invited hundreds of guests to a private party on the the top three floors of the tower last Friday night.

For the first time in a very long time, a developer has announced plans to construct a new 27-story downtown condo and office tower.

The developer is proposing to build a tower of up to 350 feet on the vacant lot between Whole Foods and Austin City Lofts.

The announcement is a clear sign that the downtown market is stabilizing and expected to improve dramatically over the next few years.

Austin Contrarian discovered a very interesting report on "job sprawl" in major metropolitan areas.

The report looks at 98 major metropolitan areas and tracks job decentralization -- the increasing percentage of jobs located more than 3 miles from the urban core.

Let's start fresh with an updated conclusion:

Over the last five years, Austin has experienced an unprecedented condo building boom. With many projects underway, the first two in the current wave are nearing completion.

Today, The Frost Bank Tower looms across the Austin skyline with a singular presence. While it may look like the world's largest nose hair trimmer, it stands 120 feet taller than any other building in the city of Austin.

Of the top ten tallest buildings in Austin, only three -- Frost, 300 W 6th, and the Hilton -- were built in the last decade.

One of today's ten tallest buildings – the Texas State Capital — was completed nearly 120 years ago in 1888.

Speaking of the Capital, Austin must be one of the largest cities in the U.S.

With more than a dozen high-rise projects currently in the planning or construction phases, Austin's skyline will change fast.

This composite image (source unknown) provides a sense of the scale of the different projects. Note that the Congress Condos has been renamed the Austonian and is currently planned at 55 stories -- about the height of the Tom Stacy project at 5th and Congress.

The Frost Bank Building, sometimes referred to as the world's largest nose hair trimmer, will no longer dominate the Austin skyline.