Pearlstone Partners is planning another residential tower in Austin’s Rainey Street District.
The Austin-based developer aims to build the tower on two adjacent tracts that span 62 East Avenue and 64 East Avenue. Last Summer, Pearlstone broke ground on a 200-unit condominium development called the Parkside at Mueller.
Plans call for 48 stories containing 245 condo units, although those numbers “could all very much change as we move through the design process,” Chris Zaiontz, a top Pearlstone executive, told the Austin-American Statesman on Thursday.
The project’s ambitious height and square footage will require Pearlstone to go through the city’s downtown density bonus program. In an interview with the Austin Business Journal last year, Pearlstone CEO Robert Lee said he envisions a high density Austin, reminiscent of New York City.
“Austin is growing, it’s evolving, but land is not growing anymore,” said Lee. “People have a preference to live closer to amenities, opportunities, work environment and so forth… we have a need to do more dense housing.”
Elsewhere downtown, Pearlstone plans to break ground by the third quarter of next year on a tower at 14th and Lavaca that would have about 225 residences.
Pearlstone intends to build five projects totalling more than 1,000 new residential units in and around downtown Austin, Zaiontz said in April. One of which, 2500 Willow, is supposed to add about 300 condo units to the rapidly gentrifying East Riverside area.
Pearlstone executives have said the value of its locally developed real estate totals more than $600 million, and said the company has invested more than $700 million in its growing pipeline of future projects.
Confronted with an ongoing housing crisis, Austin has recently moved to ease the height restrictions that have limited higher density housing in many parts of the city for decades.
Housing costs in Austin increased at more than double the rate of income growth since 2021, according to Texas A&M University’s Texas Real Estate Center.
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[Austin-American Statesman] — Maddy Sperling