In the country’s metro areas, the very definition of a central business district is up in the air. Even in Austin, where leasing has stayed roughly on par with pre-2019 totals, offices are only about 65 percent physically occupied. That means seas of empty desks, not to mention trouble for landlords when those leases come up for renewal.
As the school year comes to an end, The Real Deal pulled together some yearbook-style awards for the central business district, based on Aquila Commercial’s recent Q1 office report, which in turn pulls on data from CoStar.
To keep things fair, buildings are grouped into two divisions: pre- and post-2014 builds. In the post-pandemic “flight to quality,” as industry parlance puts it, tenants have often opted to take less space in newer buildings. As such, they each get their own weight class.
Pre 2014
Small but mighty: 501 Congress Avenue | 5 floors
This office building holds its own despite being the senior-most building in the set at 62 years old. The building, owned by the American arm of Swiss investment fund AFIAA, is 100 percent leased.
They ain’t much, but they’re honest leases: 400 West 15th Street | 17 floors
400 West is just north of 15th Street, an area of the Central Business District that has not seen as much investment as the blocks closer to Lady Bird Lake. Built in 1981, it looks like an older version of the Austin skyline, with tall strips of windows rather than the sheer glass walls of the city’s new highrises. The building is only about halfway leased, but the tenants who are signed to it have not put any space up for sublease.
The steady hand: Frost Bank Tower | 401 Congress Avenue | 33 floors
One of Austin’s most iconic towers from the moment it was built, the Frost Bank Tower is 100 percent leased, and none of that space is available for sublease. It was developed by Cousins Properties, an office REIT based in Atlanta, but since 2015 it has belonged to Lionstone Investments. The tower was built in 2003, and is no longer the tallest or newest office building in Austin. In 2022, it was renovated to keep it in the Class A office bracket. It has three floors set to come up for lease in 2025: Its 26,800-square-foot 15th floor, and 25th and 26th floors, which share an internal staircase and combine for 46,800 square feet.
The broken heart: Chase Tower | 221 West 6th Street | 21 floors
Built in 1974, this is another longtime player on the Austin office scene. It is 93 percent leased, but 126,600 square feet — a full third of its square footage — is up for sublease. That even includes its namesake, JPMorgan Chase, which in 2021 confirmed it was moving into Brandywine Realty Trust’s 405 Colorado. CIM Group bought Chase Tower in 2019.
Post-2014
Austin’s skyline is being redrawn constantly, as developers from Texas and around the world jump into the capital’s real estate market. As a whole, these buildings have much lower vacancy than their older counterparts. Aesthetically, they’ve swapped stone for glass, and many are experimenting with new possibilities for central business district development.
A large group of the buildings listed in Aquila’s report are fully leased: 300 Colorado Street, 500 West 2nd Street, 701 Rio Grande Street, the IBC Bank Plaza at 500 West 5th Street and Third + Shoal at 208 Nueces Street. Here are some notable exceptions.
The switch-hitter: The Quincy | 93 Red River Street | 29 floors
One of a handful of newer Austin towers that blend work with living, the Quincy is making a bet on the power of office space in the Rainey Street District. The office portion of this building is 96 percent leased, with 26,000 square feet up for sublease, and another 4,400 square feet up for direct lease.
Looking for love: 1836 San Jacinto Boulevard | 9 floors
Built in 2021, the Employees Retirement System of Texas building is just 54 percent leased. It has 106,700 square feet up for grabs, although it has no sublease space available.
The big kahuna: Sixth + Guad | 400 West 6th Street | 66 floors
When Meta announced it would sublease, rather than occupy, 589,000 square feet of premier office space in Lincoln Property Company’s Sixth + Guad, it seemed the city’s worst fears of a commercial real estate burst spurred by a downturn in the tech world were coming true. Since then, a handful of other major tenants have told landlords they would be shopping their space, including TikTok and 3M, but the biggest dominoes, like Google, Apple and IBM, have yet to fall.
The sublease specialist: Shoal Creek Walk | 835 West 6th Street | 15 floors
This Schlosser Development-onwed building is completely leased up, though it has four spaces up for sublease totaling nearly 69,000 square feet, nearly a third of its rentable square feet. Built in 2017, Shoal Creek Walk was Schlosser’s biggest development at the time construction began, and it’s recognizable for its groovy, uneven window accents.
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