Urbanize | New Downtown Tower Breaks Ground, Acquires Moniker
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The Rainey Street Historic District—a 12-acre wedge of land that forms the southeast corner of downtown—has for decades garnered an outsized level of interest in its development. As it has transitioned, predictably, from contested single-family neighborhood to entertainment district/civic cultural space to the locus of a dense cluster of high rises (mostly hotels and residences), that scrutiny has only intensified.
Recent discussions about the neighborhood have included the possibilities of making it a car-free zone and/or extending Red River Street to allow better traffic flow of all kinds. The city’s granting of height variances for three new towers led to a conversation about revamping the area’s density-bonus regulations. That process, in turn and somewhat unpredictably, led to a larger discussion of removing all limits around floor-to-area ratios—the crucial element in the density equation—in the downtown area and excising the Austin City Council’s role in the downtown bonus program altogether.
