A planned unit development that would bring a mixed-use development to 200 East Riverside Drive is moving forward. Austin’s Planning Commission voted at its most recent meeting to recommend the rezoning the approximately four-acre tract, currently site of a vacant building formerly used for Texas Department of Transportation offices.
Redevelopment plans for the site, which is bordered by the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail and Boardwalk 160 feet from the Lady Bird Lake front, include two to four towers with maximum height of 500 feet. Plans are still evolving, but ground-floor retail, office, residential, and hotel uses are all on the table.
The development will near a planned Capital Metro Blue Line light-rail station on Riverside Drive, the placement of which will determine how many towers can be built on the site as well affect its uses, developer representative Richard Suttle said.
The property is both the Lady Bird Lake and East Bouldin Creek watersheds and is part of what’s been called the South Central Waterfront district, planning for which, as Commissioner Adam Haynes noted, kicked off in 2013 but has not been completed. Current plans for the East Riverside project show a 9.8 percent reduction in impervious cover on the site resulting from its redevelopment.
Commissioner Jennifer Mushtaler cast the only against the rezoning, citing an absence of environmental modeling for development of the South Central Waterfront as a whole.
