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Austin

Not another ‘glass fortress’ in Downtown Austin

Cielo’s new high-rise will be different somehow

Cielo's Bobby Dillard and Perennial (Cielo, TMRW.SE)
Cielo's Bobby Dillard and Perennial (Cielo, TMRW.SE)

One of Austin’s tallest skyscrapers will rise downtown this summer. Developer Cielo promises it will depart from the perennially sprouting “glass fortress”-style buildings in the city.

Austin’s Cielo will break ground this summer on the office tower, which will be 46 stories tall. Downtown Austin’s two tallest buildings are the Independent, at 55 stories, and the Austonian, 56 stories. Both are residential buildings.

The 750,000-square-foot Perennial is one of two adjacent high rises planned on the downtown city block east of the Frost Bank Tower. Cielo owns both properties.

Perennial will be on the 0.81-acre site along Fourth Street between Brazos Street and San Jacinto Boulevard. The building will have 37,000 square feet of retail on the first three floors. Cielo promises it will be a departure from the “‘glass fortress’ aesthetic that has come to define the downtown Austin skyline.”

Naturally, given wellness-focused trends in the construction and design industry, the building will have a ground-floor public paseo (path) with a 28-foot, a 30,000-square-foot sky garden for tenants, balconies of up to 4,500 square feet on every office floor, a walking trail and 100,000 square feet of landscaped outdoor space. It will also have an 18-story parking podium.

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“The needs and priorities of companies and their workers have changed significantly over the last two years and people are placing a higher priority on wellness,” said Cielo cofounder Bobby DIllard. Along with Houston and Dallas, Austin is one of the top three metros nationally for percentage of workers returning to the office.

Cielo doesn’t have final plans for what it will build adjacent to Perennial. A tower with 886,200 square feet of interior space is possible on that lot. The developer first considered a second office building but has pivoted to plans for a residential and hotel high-rise.

“The downtown Austin office market is recovering faster than anyone imagined, but the more we studied the market and this site, the more we felt that a true, integrated mixed-use development on this block was better for the Perennial and the surrounding downtown neighborhood,” said Dillard.

Cielo has developed a number of buildings in Austin, including Third and Shoal downtown and Foundry II in East Austin. Perkins and Will is the building’s architect, with Texas’ Michael Hsu Office of Architecture designing interiors and Ten Eyck on landscape architecture. The contractor is JE Dunn.

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