How Will Austin Look in 10 Years?

The skyline, it is a’changing. There are 56 office projects planned across the Austin metro, including eight high-rise developments Downtown alone. Will we even be able to recognize the Capitol City anymore? (Especially with all the Amazon drones cluttering the future sky.)

We grabbed details on a few of the projects at Cushman & Wakefield/Oxford Commercial's second annual Austin skyline event highlighting 18 high-rise office and multifamily projects in the Austin pipeline. Trammell Crow's Brad Maples tells us his firm is developing two of them, GreenWater Treatment and Parmer. The GreenWater project is a massive undertaking that will be built in phases. (Right now it's a hole in the ground spanning four Downtown city blocks, so if all else fails it could be the world's largest water aerobics pool.)

Here's Parmer's latest rendering. Trammell Crow is partnering with Karlin to develop the Parmer project—a mix of office and industrial uses--in the suburbs. The team just did schematics on a 193k SF spec office, which is slated to break ground in the summer. In January, Trammell Crow is breaking ground on Greenwater Treatment's 439-unit multifamily tower with 30k SF of retail facing Second and Cesar Chavez and 30k SF of office above it. The remaining three blocks will be developed as office, hospitality, and additional residential.

We grabbed this massive group shot of the Oxford Commercial team, which is celebrating its 20th year in the Austin market. (It's been growing so fast--mere months ago we could've used the zoom button when snapping the pic.) The firm is handling pre-leasing for Colorado Tower for Cousins Properties, and just signed three deals totaling 79k SF. (DuBois, Bryant & Campbell leased 24k SF; Scott, Douglas & McConnico inked 40k SF, and Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr leased 15k SF.) That leaves 294k SF still available at the high-rise, which is projected to deliver in December 2014 and is the first high-rise built in Austin since Cousins developed the Frost Bank Tower in '03. Oxford is also handling preleasing on Lamar Central, The Park at Mueller, and Encino Trace.

We found Ford T Realty's Taylor Terkel and RECA prez Ward Tisdale out in the crowd. Ward tells us he's focusing on Project Duration, an ordinance the City of Austin is trying to pass that would limit the time a developer has to complete a project. The City is recommending three or five years depending on location. Ward says that's not enough time (think of great projects like The Domain, which took decades). He says RECA is trying to compromise with the City by agreeing to a time limit but says it needs to be at least 20 years. The ordinance is slated to go to vote on Dec. 12.