Tim Hendricks is stepping away from the skyline he helped build.
The longtime Austin leader for Atlanta-based Cousins Properties will retire March 1, capping a career that left fingerprints on everything from the Frost Bank Tower downtown to the office surge at The Domain. Hendricks, a senior vice president and managing director, has been Cousins’ top executive in Austin for years, steering the firm to become one of the city’s largest office landlords, the Austin Business Journal reported.
His successor is Will Crawley, a principal at Endeavor Real Estate Group, which developed much of The Domain. Cousins confirmed to the outlet that Crawley will take over local leadership.
For Hendricks, the decision crystallized far from Texas. While on safari in Tanzania last year, he looked out over a valley and realized it was time.
The timing, he said, finally lined up. Austin’s office market is flat, not rising or falling sharply. Cousins currently has no projects under construction locally. And after decades in the business, Hendricks felt the hourglass narrowing.
He exits with Cousins owning 5.6 million square feet of office space in Austin, concentrated downtown and at The Domain, according to the firm’s 2025 annual report. Its local vacancy rate sits at 5.2 percent, a stark contrast to the metro’s roughly 25 percent average vacancy, according to CBRE’s fourth-quarter data — a testament to Cousins’ focus on newer, top-tier projects.
Hendricks’ résumé is inseparable from Austin’s vertical growth. The Frost Bank Tower, once the city’s tallest building and the first U.S. high-rise to break ground after 9/11, remains one of his proudest achievements. More than a corporate maneuver, he told the outlet that it was meant to give Austin something iconic — and it helped catalyze the downtown condo and office boom that followed.
Peers credit him with pairing toughness in negotiations with long-term credibility.
“When all that dust settles, he delivers,” said JLL’s Austin co-lead Will Douglass, who has completed roughly 2 million square feet of deals with him.
Beyond office towers, Hendricks points to Community First Village — the master-planned housing community for formerly homeless residents spearheaded by Mobile Loaves & Fishes — as his most meaningful work. Though he downplays his role, he helped bring engineering expertise and industry heft to the project, according to the publication, which opened in 2015 and has since expanded.
— Eric Weilbacher
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