Plans revealed for new postal service

tower, condominiums

Another high rise is scheduled for current post office site.

By Shonda Novak
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, February 05, 2007

Two more high-rise residential towers with more than 900 condominiums are slated to be built downtown, including a 35-story tower at Sixth and Nueces streets that will provide a new home for the existing downtown post office.

Atlanta-based Novare Group Holdings and its Austin-based partner, Andrews Urban LLC, plan to break ground on the first building this fall. It will have about about 400 condominiums in a tower that will adjoin a new two-story postal facility at the corner of Fifth and San Antonio.

The post office would open in 2008 and the residential tower in fall 2009.

Once the post office moves into its new building, the developers plan to start construction on a second high-rise at the existing postal site. It would be a tower with about 40 stories and more than 500 condos as well as more than 100 hotel rooms and and more than 25,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

Both projects are expected to add about $300 million to the local tax base.

The hotel operator has not been determined. However, Novare has a hotel subsidiary called Twelve Hotels that operates an existing 101-room hotel in Atlanta. Two more Twelve hotels are under construction, one at Centennial Park in downtown Atlanta and another in Charlotte, N.C.

The development will include a seven-story parking garage; one level will be for shared parking for post office and retail customers.

The U.S. Postal Service selected Novare/Andrews Urban in August through a competitive selection process to redevelop its existing downtown location, at Fifth and Guadalupe streets. Mayor Will Wynn and many local developers have long said the site is under-used, with a one-and-a-half-story post office occupying 76,000 square feet of a prime downtown block.

The 35-story tower will occupy three-quarters of a city block adjacent to the existing Miller Blueprint Co. that Novare/Andrews Urban purchased in December. The site originally was slated for a second office tower that Intel Corp. planned, along with a chip-design factory that it halted work on amid the tech bust of 2001.

Both new towers will need city zoning variances to build higher-density projects. The developers plan to incorporate city guidelines for wider streets, with tree-lined sidewalks and benches and bicycle racks.

The condo units in both towers are expected to be priced comparably to 360, a 44-story condo project Novare/Andrews Urban is building at Third and Nueces streets.

Prices there start at under $200,000 for a one-bedroom home and under $300,000 for a two-bedroom unit. The most expensive units are in the mid-$500,000s.

With more than a dozen residential projects being built or planned downtown, developers say demand is especially keen for units with more moderately priced units, which Novare/Andrews Urban says its projects will provide.

Taylor Andrews, president of Andrews Urban, declined to say how many people are on 360's list of prospective buyers, but said demand has "far exceeded expectations."

"We have enough interest that we eagerly would like to get more than 900 units in downtown Austin," Andrews said. "We believe that the demand for attainably priced housing in downtown Austin far exceeds the planned condominium pipeline," Andrews said.

The 360 sales center will open in late February. The tower is expected to open in spring 2008. It will have 430 condominiums and about 14,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, including restaurant space.