Residential & Office High-Rises At Northshore & 500 W. 2nd St.

[Dakota79]

Austin is growing up.

http://m.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/real-estate/2014/11/2-more-large-downtown-austin-office-projects-move.html

Edited November 11, 2014 by Dakota79

[strickn]

Heard Amazon is expanding its white-collar headcount as well.  

 

But one wonders what these transplants of jobs from Silicon Valley really mean besides some discretionary income and some added work experiences in the local talent pool.   The local branch, after all, does not operate like an opportunistic receiver/responder to market feedback -- as a nimble native enterprise would do -- but rather like a non-self-determining soldier deployed in the Google or Amazon army, correct?  Risk is managed from on high more than from touch signals close at hand... As such, it does relatively much less to actually develop the interfirm relationships and food webs that recycle capital through a local economy.  It's more like industrial agribusiness -- dump capital on, scoop each monoculture off at the appointed time.

 

So I want to start to say, "Good for Austin," while I ponder if it is.  The end result on economic fertility may be the same as monocropping.

[brian0123]

Austin is favorable for tech companies because there is a lot of young talent willing to work for anything. Even at a Senior level like mine, salaries seem to average about 20k less than Houston (exceptions are the outliers like the Googles). Tech companies are able to find smart people from a large pool... and young tech workers find it more fun to work for those types of companies (or build the next "app"). Personally, I prefer Houston for the pay + cost of living, and health care industry.

[JasnoDTX]

I like that design. Its kinda retro 80's with updated treatment. Cool stuff.

[Urbannizer]

Here's a few pics I took yesterday, Google is indeed a tenant for the office tower.

 

Northshore

 

http://www.northshoreaustin.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

500 West 2nd

 

http://www.beckgroup.com/projects/500-west-second-street/

 

 

 

 

 

[Sic'EmBears]

Taken today, by me.

 

 

[urbanize713]

 

They just keep building

[strickn]

On 11/22/2014 at 10:14 AM, brian0123 said:

Austin is favorable for tech companies because there is a lot of young talent willing to work for anything. Even at a Senior level like mine, salaries seem to average about 20k less than Houston (exceptions are the outliers like the Googles). Tech companies are able to find smart people from a large pool... and young tech workers find it more fun to work for those types of companies (or build the next "app"). Personally, I prefer Houston for the pay + cost of living, and health care industry.

 

Urban economists say that the pay is priced into the region -- firms entering the labor market and recruiting nationally pay less when recruiting to desirable areas.  Even if the costs of living are higher and the offers are lower (Austin) or the costs and salaries are both high (New York), the firms are bidding less than they would have to otherwise, because people are amenable to the location and its amenity package.  The fact that the bump exists "even at a Senior level" says that the real explanation has to go deeper than a lot of youngsters willing to work for peanuts.  

 

Having to pay higher wages to get talent to move here makes Houston region firms less nimble and competitive in the free market than if they could bid less and still get the same talent, no?  More resources that could be going to innovation going instead to overhead.

 

Maybe we would have even more than 47,000,000 square feet of vacant office space to start 2019 if we had no medical industry here, but for all its press coverage the TMC knowledge industry niche has still failed so far to show signs that it will longterm do very much to diversify Southeast Texas' economy.  If the new medical school in Austin writes a new playbook, I hope we use those lessons to our ultimate benefit here.

 

While I still think it's regrettable for Austin that FAANG are not making as many interfirm decisions *in* Texas as local owners would, there seems now to be a lot of potential for people that move to the state for FAANG jobs to soon begin to moonlight and form lively new firms that *are* exporting and importing based on specific opportunities sensed from being locally based.

 

Block 185 (601 W. 2nd) near Northshore has been preleasing a tower designed by Pelli with STG, and it may soon announce being preleased for another Google office.  Pics here:

 

https://austin.towers.net/at-last-heres-our-first-look-at-the-block-185-office-tower/

[ChannelTwoNews]

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2023/06/01/google-cutbacks-real-estate.html?cx_testId=40&cx_testVariant=cx_21&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s

"Many are wondering if Google will consolidate its Austin offices in the sail tower. It has several landlords on pins and needles; employees, too — some have said they're still unsure if they'll move into the shiny new sail tower.

In all, Google leases an estimated 1.3 million square feet of office space in Central Austin — with the sail tower being the largest chunk. It's also the marquee tenant at the tower next door, 500 West 2nd Street."

 

[ChannelTwoNews]

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2023/10/12/austin-office-space-update.html

"Three of the newest and biggest office towers on the skyline — Innovation Tower, the “sail tower” and Austin’s tallest high-rise, Sixth and Guadalupe — are still empty after being ready for finish-out for several months.

Google, the internet leviathan, leased every square foot of office space in the 35-story tower that resembles a sailboat on the shore of Lady Bird Lake prior to the pandemic's disruption. Google representatives haven’t made clear when or even if they’ll still move in. If Google lets go of all or some of that space, the building will qualify as a multi-tenant office building and would rank No. 1 on our list, which is below this article. As of now, the new Indeed Tower is the largest multi-tenant office building in the region."

[ChannelTwoNews]

Austin real estate news: What's up with downtown? - Austin Business Journal (bizjournals.com)

"The Trammell Crow-developed tower has almost 800,000 square feet of office space sitting dark on Google's dime. According to commercial real estate firm Avison Young, rental rates in Austin's Central Business District at year-end 2019 averaged $67.39 per square foot for trophy properties. Assuming Google signed a lease at that rate, the company could be on the hook for about $145,000 per day or $53.2 million per year. It's apparently a cost that can be stomached by a company that reported $74 billion in net income last year."