This is What Austin’s Tallest Building Will Look Like

By THC Staff | February 2, 2016

 

Earlier this year on Jan. 11, the construction crew broke ground and began the project for what’s being dubbed “The Independent,” Austin’s soon-to-be tallest building.

It will tower nearly 700 feet, and will include 370 high-end residential suites along with ground-floor retail units and other commercial spaces. The building’s aesthetics are very geometric, with its angular shape creating from afar what looks like a large Jenga-block tower or something constructed with giant, glass Legos.

From renderings provided by Urbanspace Realtors, it looks pretty impressive.

“It’s now a downtown that emphasizes the economy, that makes Austin a focal point in a worldwide information and knowledge economy,” Texas senator Kirk Watson said in Community Impact. “Ultimately it comes down to people who were willing to take a risk and push in our downtown.”

Views from upper-level rooms will include panoramic Texas Hill Country scenes that are unlike any we’ve witnessed personally, and are enough to make anyone gasp at first sight.

The mix-use residential and commercial space is expected to be a premier highlight in what Forbes is calling America’s top U.S. City of the Future, and one reason Mayor Steve Adler said “[Downtown Austin] is not only the living room to our community, it’s our community’s piggy bank.”

Through taxes levied on The Independent — whose residential units range in price from the mid-$400,000s to $3.4 million — the city expects to earn $18 million toward its Affordable Housing program.

Construction on the project is expected to take three years to complete, putting a new tower in Austin’s skyline some time in 2019.