Hines just sold what used to be the Transco Tower, still one of my favorite Houston skyscrapers, for about $420 million, so he won't have a problem building a 41 story tower Downtown (not that he would anyway). The new building looks nice. I wish it was going to be 20-30 stories taller, but what the heck. The top of the former Transco Tower, looking towards Downtown.
Not any longer. It's changed, a lot. Upwardly mobile folks are buying those run down homes and fixing them up. The location is just too damned good, super close to Downtown, for it to stay like you remember it. Sure, there are still some areas you want to be careful in, but they are disappearing. East Austin is going through a reformation. I've thought about buying a place there myself. The main reason I haven't is that I only have about 5 years left on my house note.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=114123&page=226 This forum updates every city's developments in the world from members .. pretty cool.
Great design and tower. For those complaining about traffic, this is downtown for Christ's sake. More Houstonians need to ride public transportation, cities get dense.
I read SSP often, great site for city and urban development. SkyscraperCity is another one that is decent.
There's is absolutely no part of austin that you "have to be careful in." in austin, Mexican = be careful! Trying to figure out who this lead tenant is.... Have some ideas but really have no clue. Pretty curious to see the validity of that claim bc this thing doesn't get built w/o one.
Ssp, city data and others mainly get their info from HAIF That's where they got the renderings from except for the initial skinny one http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/topic/27729-hines-next-downtown-tower/