Construction started last week on a nearly $300 million mixed-use hotel/condo high-rise in Austin, complete with generous studio space and a new venue for “Austin City Limits.

By Eileen Schwartz

Austin developers and music fans are applauding the start of construction a new downtown high rise.

Photo credit: Andersson Wise Architects.

Austin Commercial of Dallas broke ground last week on a $295 million, 37-story W Austin Hotel & Residences, a clear sign of Austin’s booming downtown condo market continuing to buck national trends. Scheduled for completion in early 2011, the sustainable, mixed-use development includes a new home for the popular live-music show “Austin City Limits,” which has aired on public television for more than 30 years. The venue will boast a 2,480-person capacity theater, more than five times the show’s current capacity.

Nearly half of the 165 planned residential units of the 252-room hotel/condo tower, the centerpiece of the development, are already under contract. They will cover floors 18 to 33 and range in price from $400,000 to more than $3 million.

Targeting a LEED platinum certification, the mixed-use project will cover an entire city block—known  as Block 21—adjacent to Austin City Hall.

The development will tap into Austin Energy's district-cooling system, a large, thermal energy storage system that produces ice at night—when electricity cost is lower—then  uses the ice the next day as chilled water that acts as a coolant for the HVAC system.

The site, which takes advantage of its proximity to Lady Bird Lake with views of the city’s active riverside hike-and-bike trials, lends the tower an “indoor/outdoor attitude.”

Arthur Andersson of Andersson Wise Architects of Austin, the project team’s leading design firm, says the outdoor public spaces, adjacent to the music studio, were designed “consistent with Austin's out-of-doors lifestyle.”

“They will help take the music out into the streets,” Andersson says.

At least five other high-rise residential projects are in the works in downtown Austin, including what will be the city’s tallest, the 55-story Austonian.