In Austin, the extra issues change the extra they keep the identical.
Whereas Stonelake Capital Companions is about so as to add one other excessive rise to the Austin skyline, the corporate is ready on preserving the historic Previous Depot Resort subsequent door. This week, the Austin Design Fee really helpful the undertaking for a downtown density bonus, which lets buildings rise taller than is usually allowed, the Austin Enterprise Journal reported.
To qualify for the Downtown Density Bonus Program, a undertaking should both incorporate reasonably priced housing or pay a price. Stonelake has opted for the latter — to the tune of $4.5 million.
The fee vote comes a bit of over a 12 months after Stonelake first unveiled plans for the positioning that many know because the outdated house of Italian restaurant Carmelo’s, which shuttered in 2017 after 32 years in enterprise.
Stonelake bought the property at a December 2020 foreclosures public sale from Nate Paul’s embattled actual property agency World Class with a credit score bid of $17.8 million. Stonelake filed a web site plan for the land on East Fifth Road in July 2021— the identical 12 months it closed its sixth actual property funding fund with $555 million.
If authorised by town, the 37-floor condominium tower dubbed fifth + Pink River will go up at 506 East Fifth Road, whereas the 150-year-old Previous Depot Resort at 504 East Fifth Road could be restored for retail use. Constructed in 1872, the Previous Depot Resort initially served as a boarding home adjoining to the passenger depot of the Houston and Texas Central Railway. The limestone construction glided by many names — Railroad Home, the Depot Resort, Schaeffer’s Boarding Home, and the St. Louis Home — till it was dubbed the Previous Depot Resort when designated as a historic web site within the Nineteen Sixties.
Plans for the constructing embody 242 models with two amenity decks that would come with the everyday trappings of an city high-rise, akin to an outside kitchen and rooftop pool. The tower could be roughly 271,000 sq. toes: 221,000 sq. toes of residences, 44,000 sq. toes of widespread space area and practically 5,000 sq. toes of retail area, in line with paperwork filed with town.
In June, the Historic Landmark Fee gave an emphatic inexperienced mild to Stonelake’s proposal for the undertaking.
“That is the form of undertaking we wish to see as preservationists,” mentioned architect Tere O’Connell, who will oversee the rehabilitation effort.
Nonetheless, Samuel Franco of the Design Fee felt much less enthused, saying he would have most well-liked the developer to take better recognition of the encompassing space’s historic significance as a middle level of the Mexican-American neighborhood.
“I’d like to see this area being a cultural testomony,” he mentioned. “I’m simply not seeing any of that come via right here. That’s essential, from the neighborhood’s perspective.”
Stonelake didn’t present remark.
— Maddy Sperling