rocketman1

I completely agree with N Judah... While I'm not saying this is a bad, stupid, or ugly project, I ask you what differentiates it with The Woodlands Mall/riverwalk or with what they're trying to do in Sugarland and now the old Town and Country Mall site ...all are essentially fake looking stucco crap projects with a little polished metal thrown together in the spirit of New Urbanism...which, I'm sorry folks, does have its faults. I'm not saying it's 'wrong', but it has become rather cult like in people's belief that it will solve everything. If you want to talk dense, URBAN, modern, and CHIC, then think the Houston Galleria. Yes, folks. In our own backyard. That's first class. This is a suburban piece of crap 12 miles from downtown Austin that is disguised to be urban. Why does everything Austin do somehow seem to get the seal of approval? Just read what everyone has said so far...Houston isn't 'FAR BEHIND THE TIMES'...lol...if not having one of these stucco places is "far behind" to you, then I ask you where you've been living? Under a rock? Again, Houston has several of these projects going up around town on a little smaller scale, and I'm not necessarily a fan of those, either. But they're there, Austin needs a legit mall. They say this will be it and for years to come. But I'm talking about a mall like Dallas's or Houston's Galleria. Compact, enclosed (Texas heat), and full of high end department stores and boutique stores. Not some outdoor pavilion where people on a Saturday afternoon will sweat and wear shorts, sandals, fanny packs, and Mickey Mouse t-shirts to beat the Texas heat. That doesn't seem so cool to me. This mall looks like that fake Hollywood town square from Back to the Future 2! lol...and that movie set was supposed to be a joke about the suburbs people. It looks like they're trying to turn it into some Country Club Plaza in Kansas City...but that takes 25 years, too, and a ton of land. Not just for the shops, but for the 30 story midrises, condos, park, etc. (Country Club Plaza in KC is like Houston's Uptown Galleria area...but all outdoors and made for the automobile...CCP is also only 4 miles from downtown KC with an area sort of like Montrose/Sixth St. (Westport St.) between the downtown and the CCP area...it's just a straight shot down Broadway street from downtown KC to CCP more or less like Westheimer goes thru north museum area/Montrose and then onto Galleria is in Houston. The mall part looks really nice...but really stucco, too...bottom line, it's no Galleria. And I don't see this Austin place being any CCP in KC, either. It's 12 miles from downtown Austin and doesn't connect to downtown as well as the centers in KC or Houston. But who knows. Maybe it will in a 100 years like The Domain's homepage states! http://www.countryclubplaza.com/ --- compare. http://www.thedomainaustin.com/ --- if you go to the Gallery section, you will notice that a lot of these pictures aren't impressive at all. Buildings look like something you would find on the Beltway, not the Loop.