Cousins Properties is Selling Downtown Austin Office

Cousins Properties is dumping an aging office building in Downtown Austin a year after picking up the newly-built Sail Tower.

The real estate investment trust based in Atlanta shared plans to sell One Eleven Congress in its first-quarter earnings call, the Austin Business Journal reported. The sale is expected to close in the third quarter; the price and buyer have not been disclosed. The property was most recently appraised at $192 million, but the purchase price is expected to be higher.

The 500,000-square-foot, 30-story office tower, at 111 Congress Avenue, was built in 1987. The outlet said it’s the seventh-largest office building in Austin. In June, the property was 84 percent full.

News of the sale comes a little over a year after Cousins picked up Sail Tower, also downtown, for $522 million, or almost $650 per square foot. Google signed a lease at the 35-story, 804,000-square-foot office tower in 2019, three years before it was delivered. It sat conspicuously empty until the tech giant quietly moved in late last year.

Even with Cousins’ sale of One Eleven Congress, the firm is still the fourth-largest commercial property owner in Austin, the publication said. The REIT owns 21 buildings totaling 5.9 million square feet.

Leadership at the REIT’s Austin office is shaking up after Tim Hendricks’ March 1 retirement. The longtime leader of Cousins’ Austin office left his mark on office properties throughout the city, from the Frost Bank Tower downtown to The Domain, steering the firm’s rise to become one of Austin’s top real estate players. Endeavor principal Will Cawley succeeded Hendricks.

Cousins has also become a Dallas trophy office heavyweight. It purchased The Link at Uptown from Dallas-based developer Kaizen Development Partners in what was one of the city’s biggest office deals of 2025. Cousins paid $218 million, or $747 per square foot, for the 25-story, 292,000-square-foot office building at 2601 Olive Street.

— Jess Hardin