Historically speaking, the most important cocktail ever poured in Austin isn’t the Mexican Martini, the Ranch Water, or even the Mad Dog Margarita. By some overly peevish definitions, it wasn’t even a cocktail at all. But when Woody Elder bellied up to the bar at Christie’s Seafood Restaurant on Barton Springs Road shortly after noon on Tuesday, June 1, 1971, 53 years ago this month ..read more

Constructed on parkland along the south shoreline of downtown’s central waterfront in 1969, the Fannie Davis Town Lake Gazebo is one of Austin’s most important and recognizable works of small-scale architecture. As the first structure built to beautify the shores of the new lake crossing the heart of the city after the completion of the ..read more

After reviewing the promising early results of the city’s safety pilot on Barton Springs Road last month, we decided to casually survey our readers on where they might like to see the project’s infrastructure improvements applied elsewhere in Austin. The pilot’s “road diet”-style lane reduction, added protection for bike lanes, and upgraded pedestrian access all constitute a no-brainer for the highly visible gateway ..read more

Churches are one of the most overlooked owners of urban land, with more than a dozen large properties held by congregations in the downtown Austin area alone. Facing declining attendance and rising property values, some churches looking to maximize the use of these properties in alignment with their faith-based missions are pursuing affordable housing development — it’s so ..read more

A demolition permit filed with the city nearly a year ago for the Riverside Place shopping center at 2410 East Riverside Drive was finally approved this week, another sign that the 10-acre strip center’s redevelopment by owners Endeavor Real Estate Group are slowly moving forward. Endeavor, which purchased the property in 2019, has not yet publicly acknowledged any plans ..read more

The apartment project planned for the Grant Plaza offices at 611 East Sixth Street would be the first major residential development built inside downtown Austin’s infamous Sixth Street entertainment district in a generation — and even before a certain sense of uncertainty struck our local real estate market, the proposal first surfaced in 2022 by New York-based investment firm Empire Square Group and national developers Ryan ..read more

Anderson Square is the official name for the 16-acre ocean of asphalt located at the southwest corner of the interchange between Highway 183, West Anderson Lane, and North Lamar Boulevard in Central Austin; a sleepy yet humongous shopping center anchored by a Hobby Lobby, Planet Fitness, and one of the city’s most consistently underused parking lots. Aside ..read more

The transformative land use changes passed by Austin City Council last week didn’t come out of nowhere, although the possibility of their adoption felt like wild fantasy only a few short years ago. The speed of Austin’s changing local attitude towards density and zoning reform makes a bit more sense in the face of rising housing costs — by 2020, even relatively high earners started experiencing the effects of our local ..read more

After a history of serious car crashes and a particularly dramatic accident in 2022 injuring 10 people, the yearlong safety pilot implemented on Barton Springs Road by the City of Austin’s Transportation and Public Works Department was a welcome intervention on one of the city’s most popular streets for pedestrians and cyclists at the gateway to Zilker Park — by reducing the road to one car ..read more

We were pretty tickled to dig up the news last year that Dallas-based developers Trammell Crow Company and its subsidiary High Street Residential were planning a mixed-use redevelopment of South Austin’s largely vacant Twin Oaks Shopping Center at 2315 South Congress Avenue on behalf of the 10-acre center’s owners at H-E-B. Although the finer details of the plan remained a little ..read more