Brandywine Tees Up Uptown ATX Renovation Plans

Brandywine Realty Trust’s plans to reimagine its 66-acre North Austin office campus after IBM’s exit are starting to take shape.

The Philadelphia-based firm expects to start construction on renovating building 902, at 11501 Burnet Road, by the end of July, according to plans filed with the state. The interior and exterior renovation of the six-story, 172,000-square-foot building will include a revamped lobby and bathrooms and new amenities.

The work is expected to cost $31 million, or $180 per square foot, and should wrap up by the end of 2027. The timeline coincides with IBM’s exit, which is slated for mid-2027. IBM is relocating to The Domain, Austin’s second downtown, which is across the street from Uptown ATX. It’s assuming Meta’s full-building, 320,000-square-foot lease at Domain 12.

Brandywine’s vision for Uptown ATX has already started taking form with the delivery of One Uptown, a 371,000-square-foot office building that nabbed a blockbuster lease from Nvidia, and Solaris House, a 341-unit apartment complex.

Brandywine originally planned to transform its 80s-era Broadmoor office campus into Uptown ATX by demolishing existing buildings, but has shifted gears to renovation since announcing the plans nearly a decade ago.

Retooled plans involving multimillion-dollar renovations are currently focused on buildings 902, 904 and 906. The three buildings comprise about half a million square feet of office space. The pivot reflects a drastic swing in Austin’s office market. Growth in the Texas capital was booming in 2018 when the project was announced, but has abruptly softened in the last few years. As a result, updated plans for Uptown ATX will feature about one-third office space, down from one-half, as initially projected.

Changes to Austin’s office market pushed Brandywine to reconsider its office holdings in the city. It listed 1 million square feet of Austin office space last May to gauge pricing in the slow market.

Austin office market vacancy ticked up between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 from 22.1 to 22.4 percent, according to a recent report from Colliers. Meanwhile, overall asking rents dropped from $46.20 per square foot to $45.45 per square foot over the same period.