Surface lot jackpot: Downtown Austin has potential in its asphalt

In most big cities, empty development sites downtown are rarer than two-dollar bills. But in Austin, from Lady Bird Lake to the Texas Capitol, sites like that dot the central business district. 

To find them, just look for the cars.

In the roughly 130 city blocks that are zoned as Austin’s central business district, there are 14 large surface parking lots, according to an analysis of maps, property records and on-the-street visits. Those don’t include the many multi-level garages, on-street spots, or parking podiums that comprise the lower floors of many downtown Austin towers. 

Though they make up a fraction of the more than 71,500 parking spaces downtown, these surface parking lots add up to 365,500 square feet of essentially undeveloped open space within the city’s most expensive submarket.

Big-name developers like Endeavor, Stream and Kairoi already own some of them. But others belong to smaller builders, the state and until November, even the Salvation Army. The lots vary in size from 6,300 square feet all the way up to 77,000 square feet, forming potentially huge footprints — or, while capital markets remain in flux, covered land plays. 

At least one of the properties will not remain a parking lot for long. 701 Trinity Street, currently a 77,200-square-foot lot, sits at the intersection of the Red River District and Dirty Sixth, two popular downtown nightlife scenes. Town Lake Company plans to build a 414,300-square-foot development with 515 apartments and nine floors of office space on the lot, according to its website. 

Nearby, Stream plans a wholesale redevelopment of Dirty Sixth, where it owns more than 40 properties. One of those is the small but importantly located parking lot at 720 East 6th Street. The lot sits against the Interstate 35 service road and will be the eastern gateway to the redesigned strip. 

Until recently, 400 West 3rd was another large empty parking lot. In addition to its location at the heart of downtown, it is next to Republic Square, one of the few sizable parks in the central business district. Lincoln Property Company, Phoenix Property Company and DivcoWest are building the Republic, an 833,000-square-foot office tower. 

Austin’s wealth of parking lots is due partly to nature, and partly to nurture. The city is situated largely on hard bedrock that makes it difficult to excavate for underground parking garages. At the same time, the city has long been built around cars, even as local politicians have taken several steps to discourage sprawl. 

Notably, the city moved to end parking mandates for developments last year. Downtown Austin has not had those requirements since 2013, but the vast majority of projects still include significant parking elements.

Without parking requirements, developers will have options to build less than code would have otherwise required them. 

“Parking is a moneymaker, so developers are incentivized economically to produce parking, regardless of the parking requirements. But they wish they had more flexibility in choosing whether or not to do it,” Simon McGown, Studio Director at Runa Workshop, told TRD soon after the rule passed. 

Read more

Austin

YIMBYTown comes to Austin

Austin

How Related scored SoCo’s best new development site

National

The political battles shaping real estate this year