Downtown Austin is now home to the start of the largest building in the country, or at least in Texas. It now has a name: Waterline. The tower at 98 Red River will be 1,022 feet tall and will be built above Lady Bird Lake.
Austin will get its first supertall building, which is a skyscraper higher than 984 feet. It will have 74 stories. The Independent, at 694 feet, and the Austonian, at 607 feet, are the city’s biggest buildings right now. The building will have 352 high-end apartments, 700,000 square feet of workplaces, and the 1 Hotel Austin, which will have 251 rooms. On the first floor, there will be 24,000 square feet of stores and bars.
Waterline is on 3.3 acres on the east side of Waller Creek, not far from where it meets Lady Bird Lake. It was designed by KPF. The project will add two new pedestrian bridges and three more public bike and pedestrian entry points to the Waterloo Greenway and the Ann Butler Hike and Bike Trail, connecting Downtown’s Rainey Street and City Center.
The base of the tower will be 30 feet above street level. It will be held up by sculptured columns that will form a two-story canopy over a public walkway and stairs that lead to Waller Creek. On the first two stories of the tower, there will be shops and bars. The hotel, offices, and apartments will all have their own entrances.
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The 13 floors above the shops and restaurants will be home to the 1 Hotel Austin. The 14th floor will have a hall and meeting rooms, and the 16th floor will have a rooftop pool. The hotel will be the first SH Hotel Resorts place to stay in Texas. On the next 27 stories, there will be office space. The 14th floor will have a leisure deck with 24,000 square feet of landscaped outdoor space, a bar and lounge, meeting rooms inside, and a kitchen for special events.
On the 41st floor, Waterline’s top floors will have features like two pools, a lounge, a bar, a kitchen, and a co-working space. The floor above will have a yoga studio, a fitness studio, a steam room, soaking tubs, chairs, a grill, and a place for everyone to eat together.
The building is being built by the Lincoln Property Company in Dallas and Kairoi Residential in San Antonio. A big Canadian pension fund manager called PSP Investments is the main stock partner. The building loan came from Blackstone Mortgage Trust.
The main architect in Dallas is HKS. The office interior designer is Michael Hsu Office of Architecture. The hotel and private designer is Studio Mai. The landscape architects are TBG Partners and Nudge Design. As for who is working on the project, DPR is the general builder, Brockett Davis Drake is the structural engineer, and Alvine is the MEP engineer. We are WGI Austin.
Vesper, the Modern Austin Residences, River Street Residences, and 80 Rainey are some of the new and planned buildings that will be in the Rainey Street Historic District. Waterline will connect them all. The 750-foot-tall Conrad Residences Austin and the Conrad Austin hotel are going to be built close by.
When it’s done, Waterline will not only be the tallest building in Texas, but it will also be one of three skyscrapers in Austin that are higher than any other building that LPC has worked on and broken ground on in the last three years. Sixth and Guadalupe, which was also built with Kairoi Residential, will have 66 floors. The Republic, a 48-story business building next to Republic Square Park, will open in late 2024.