Seaholm Power, LLC has released new renderings of the proposed Seaholm Power Plant redevelopment, which it will present to City Council tonight.
The site plan includes an extension of the city street grid, filling the gap in Third Street, connecting West Avenue to Cesar Chavez and adding a new street, Seaholm Drive, between Third Street and Cesar Chavez. Both new streets get pedestrian/bicycle crossings at their intersections with Cesar Chavez, to help integrate this development with the hike and bike trail. Rail is also included in the mix, but it is not clear to us exactly how that will play out.
They turn the existing structure into a retail center, build a 22-story residential/hotel tower (seven floors of condos over 160 hotel rooms) and a two-story office building, and parkify more than 3 acres of open space.
We love the extension of the street grid, and would über-love Austin to get a decent rail system (we are aware that the current proposals are lacking in decency). Seaholm is one of Austin's most awesome historical structures - we'd rather see Tate America getting put in here (love you Gilbert & George!), but we recognize that shit isn't gonna happen, so at least the building is getting preserved and used and we can get behind that. The hotel/condo tower looks cool, but the office building looks a little gimpy and scared of the street. We'd jack that mother up to at least six stories and move the outer edge right up to the sidewalk. Also, it isn't 100% clear that the first floors of both new structures are retail, but we truly truly hope that they are.
The website also includes lots of beautiful pictures of the current interior of the historic structure.
Image from Seaholm Power, LLC
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that sure is pretty, but why does the rest of downtown picture look like an industrial wasteland?
I actually thought that was a pretty cool rendering feature - it is drawn on top of a satellite image of its actual location. The industrial wasteland you refer to is the current transformer structure of the power plant and the water treatment plant, both of which are going away.
It's not exactly current. Look at the apartments across 3rd they drew in - those exist today. Look farther north. Huge construction site - they could at least have thrown in a rendering of what's going up there now (Monarch, I think).
Does the 2-story office building seem odd to anyone else? It sure seems like a development with seven floors of condos could use some more office space to go along with it.