Austin | Perennial Tower (4th & Brazos Phase I) | 628 Feet | 47 Floors | Proposed

[The ATX]

Originally Posted by Lobotomizer

There are not a lot of cities the size of Austin, or any size for that matter, building towers like Austin either.

I also do not think Austin has parking minimums in it's downtown. There have been at least 2 towers built without any parking whatsoever.

The developers choose how much parking they are going to build.

The ones without ONSITE parking are hotels. That's easier to do than office and residential, but they still have off site parking - just no new parking structures. I think we could see a residential tower with no onsite parking in the near future . But it will take a while for office IMO.

[MichaelB]

Originally Posted by The ATX

The Skyhouse in Rainey is hopefully the last Downtown tower built with a separate parking garage next door. What a waste of valuable real estate that was.

Agreed. It's interesting how quickly our land use has changed.

[enragedcamel]

I actually thought about it more, and realized that I don't care about parking podiums, because at the end of the day they result in taller buildings, and tall is good. So maybe we need more parking, not less!

[Sigaven]

Cities with older downtowns tend to have separate parking garages, look at Houston for example. Seems like half the buildings downtown are garages. The benefit of that though is the possibility to be torn down at a later date.

[JACKinBeantown]

Much improved design!

As for the garage, I can't imagine this building (or practically any other residential) being used for anything other than residential. So what future use could there be for the garage other than parking? There will be cars for at least the next 100 years. They may fly and run on air, but they'll still need a place to park. The only exception is that the car folds up into a briefcase like on The Jetsons.


https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9a/ae...15d2b04c8d.gif

On a related note, look how thin the people were (will be) on The Jetsons. Then again, that was 60 years ago.

[We vs us]

I'm intrigued by the gold color, too. I'm crossing fingers that the end product will look space age rather than a throwback to 1986.

[Sigaven]

Originally Posted by JACKinBeantown

Much improved design!

As for the garage, I can't imagine this building (or practically any other residential) being used for anything other than residential. So what future use could there be for the garage other than parking? There will be cars for at least the next 100 years. They may fly and run on air, but they'll still need a place to park. The only exception is that the car folds up into a briefcase like on The Jetsons.


https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9a/ae...15d2b04c8d.gif

On a related note, look how thin the people were (will be) on The Jetsons. Then again, that was 60 years ago.

This is an office building though, not residential.

[papertowelroll]

Originally Posted by ILUVSAT

I understand.

However, Towers has not always been spot-on, statistically. Additionally, the "original" elevations show a 54 level tower which had been dubbed a 50 story one. Take away the 5 levels of mechanical and you have a 49-story functioning tower (close to 46, right?). So, I guess we'll either wait for the approved elevations or someone contact Cielo for confirmation!?!

Basically, I wouldn't deem this tower as having been cut down quite yet.

On a side note...didn't someone mention that this tower and The Republic might be after the same lead Tennant? If so, don't you find it interesting that Perennial is almost the same size as The Republic (both roughly 750,000 RSF and almost the exact same number of levels tall)?

Completely unscientifically, the renderings don't look 700' to me. It seems a bit taller than Frost and notably shorter than the Austonian. Of course it could simply be a matter of perspective.

[GoldenBoot]

^I see your point. Agree. It doesn't seem to be a 700' tower. But, renderings are more about what the building would look like within its surroundings. And, they are not always precisely acetate with regard to height. Example: the current renderings of 98 Red River don't seem to reflect a tower of 1,022' in height.

[AusTex]

This is a very sexy tower! The rounded corners and curvy balconies are very soft and sensuous. The earthy toned lumber bands mixed with a cool bluish glass are very clean. Even the extreme parking podium is well blended with the office floors for an overall uniform look. I can Hardly imagine what the second, north tower's design will be.

As The ATX already stated: This may rival or exceed The Republic in design!

Well Done!

[JACKinBeantown]

Originally Posted by Sigaven

This is an office building though, not residential.

Really? I thought it was residential BECAUSE of the garage. Yeah... no... what I said only makes sense for residential. If Austin ever has a good public transit system there will be no need to park at an office building. At least not THAT many parking spaces.

[papertowelroll]

Originally Posted by JACKinBeantown

Really? I thought it was residential BECAUSE of the garage. Yeah... no... what I said only makes sense for residential. If Austin ever has a good public transit system there will be no need to park at an office building. At least not THAT many parking spaces.

I think offices here need parking even more than residential. I work downtown and the *vast* majority of the office drives to work and parks in the garage. People would be pissed if the building had no parking. I doubt Austin's transit system will ever be good enough to build zero parking office buildings.

At least with residential, if you live downtown you probably won't need to use a car very often. That's way more plausible to drop the parking from I think.

[chinchaaa]

Originally Posted by papertowelroll

I think offices here need parking even more than residential. I work downtown and the *vast* majority of the office drives to work and parks in the garage. People would be pissed if the building had no parking. I doubt Austin's transit system will ever be good enough to build zero parking office buildings.

At least with residential, if you live downtown you probably won't need to use a car very often. That's way more plausible to drop the parking from I think.

But does the majority drive to work because there’s free parking? Many companies around here pay for vans and shuttles to commute to the office. Many people bike, walk or use public transit. Every single tower doesn’t need this much parking. It’s insane.

[Echostatic]

My father drove downtown and parked at the post office block every weekday for almost a decade. It sure as hell wasn't free then.

[We vs us]

Originally Posted by chinchaaa

But does the majority drive to work because there’s free parking? Many companies around here pay for vans and shuttles to commute to the office. Many people bike, walk or use public transit. Every single tower doesn’t need this much parking. It’s insane.

Maybe, maybe not. But there's no central clearing house that calculates the exact number of parking spaces we need at a given time. No one's gonna tell Cielo, "thanks gents, we only need 25 more levels of parking in the city, not the 30 you're proposing. Feel free to top up your commercial square footage!"

Of course you're right -- people get around in many different ways. But the car still rules if you're commuting from anywhere outside, say, a five mile radius of DT. And TBH, even when Project Connect gets those two downtown subways complete, there will STILL be massive demand for car (or EV) parking downtown. I hate those podiums, too, but they get used without a doubt.

[papertowelroll]

Originally Posted by chinchaaa

But does the majority drive to work because there’s free parking? Many companies around here pay for vans and shuttles to commute to the office. Many people bike, walk or use public transit. Every single tower doesn’t need this much parking. It’s insane.

We have shuttles and the 16(!!) stories of parking garages still get 100% full. People would an absolute throw a fit if there wasn't parking. There is just very little culture of white collar people taking public transit here, particularly for those who don't live in the city core. It will take decades to change that. Even something like Seattle has what, 20% or so that ride transit to work?

Mind you I personally don't own a car but that's not normal at all.

[WestAustinite]

I feel like there should be a separate thread just for Parking Podiums as the same discussions keep coming up again and again.

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by WestAustinite

I feel like there should be a separate thread just for Parking Podiums as the same discussions keep coming up again and again.

I don't quite understand why so many of these threads keep getting cluttered with never ending comments about parking podiums. They're not going away anytime soon. Plus, as much as I wish buildings with parking garages weren't the norm, most (not all) of them don't look nearly as bad as people make them out to be.

Unlike places like Manhattan, more people still see the cost/benefit/convenience of driving into the city as better than the cost/benefit/convenience of mass transit. In conjunction, developers see the cost/benefit of integrating parking into their buildings as better than not providing any.

Until more transit routes with convenient park and rides and whatnot become readily available, it becomes more painful to drive into downtown, more streets are converted to be pedestrian only/dominant, and more policies are put into place to help all of this along, the driving/parking/transit balance is not going to change.

[Atom_Mirny]

Parking podium situation is real easy to understand.

If developers are consistently building them, there is demand.

If they continue to build them bigger than you think is necessary, and their lots are full, the basis of what you believe is necessary is incorrect.

Any argument about what that space would be in some hypothetical world that isn't going to exist for decades at best is moot when the buildings would not exist today if constructed for that future as they wouldn't meet the demands necessary for them to receive financing and land tenants.



tl;dr - the parking podium issue comes down to people on this forum not accepting that people choose to live differently than them.

[StoOgE]

Originally Posted by Atom_Mirny

tl;dr - the parking podium issue comes down to people on this forum not accepting that people choose to live differently than them.

I guarantee 90% of this forum has a car and uses it to commute.

I lived without owning a car for 5 years in NYC. It was kind of a pain at times but it worked because the infrastructure exists to get anywhere you want without a car or with a taxi/uber/lyft.

Honestly though, the reason people *dont* own cars in NYC isn't because you don't need them, its because owning one is an inconvinience. Parking is impossible to come by, traffic is horrible, and you have to move the dumb car twice a week for street cleanings.

If owning a car in NYC was convenient more people would.

Like, I agree with everyone that thinks that they are bad and we shouldn't design cities around them, but we did and so we need them. Hopefully we'll see cities begin to be designed smarter where they are less necessary but until then expect most people to need cars to get to and from most places in the city. Hopefully that changes over time.

I promise though, developers are not spending large sums of money building unecessary 200' podiums on their buildings. And the reason we don't have seperate parking garages is because our real estate is too valuable. Austin *had* separate parking garages in the 70s-90s.

AFAIK 300 West 6th was our last building built with a separate parking structure in 2001. Frosts is semi-separate I would argue and is from around the same time-frame.