August 8, 2006
Legacy Condos: Give Me the Luxuries of Life and I Will Willingly Do Without the Necessities
Um ... ok. This appears to be some sort of an extremely early stage rendering of Legacy Partners' proposed condo tower, Legacy @ Town Lake, on the NE corner of Rainey and Cummings. It is clearly meant to convey an idea of the size and shape of the building. The details will probably change a lot before this is built.
They may also want to re-think the promo material. Conjuring a dead architect isn't going to help you sell condos if the design doesn't look anything like that architect's work. Building with concrete don't make you Frank Lloyd Wright. The Illinois notwithstanding, FLW was better know for low, sprawling designs like Taliesin West than for condo towers with high ceilings.
Similar to the neighboring Shore condos, the parking garage of Legacy @ Town Lake will be fronted by live/work “lofts” with a street level storefront entrance and living space above. This is certainly much better than having a blank wall or the side of a parking garage facing the street. We would prefer real street front retail, but developers are unwilling to build it unless they are forced to do so by the city, as they are downtown. The main problem is parking: developers want to reserve the parking garage for condo residents. If they put in retail/commercial space, the city requires them to provide parking for that space. That means they have to add more floors of parking and keep ‘em separated. This makes the cost of street front retail dramatically more expensive. Instead, they do live/work lofts.
The plus side is that when the area is a little more developed and the demand for retail in the area is more substantial, these live/work lofts should be reasonably easy to convert into small stores or restaurants. It would be great if the city would remove the parking requirements- customers will be nearby residents that don’t need parking, people who come in via mass transit, or people who park in the plethora of surface lots and parking garages that litter downtown (for now). Until then, residents will have to make due with their luxury condos without having a nearby grocery store. That must be what Legacy meant by "The “Frank Lloyd Wright theme" - they were refering to the quotation in the title of this post, not his architectural designs.
* Image from Legacy Partners *
| 
Seriously. Stop making mass transit jokes. Let's make this a moral issue. I mean everyone in this town frickin' believes that mass transit is good, and yet very few ride it. Let's start making everyone feel bad for not taking it. Really bad.
It's like sleeping with your sister. This isn't even really an issue now a days. Why? Because anytime anyone mentions incest they mention it in a bad, morally repugnant light. You don't even have to think about how gross it is. You already have societal shame there to make sure you don't. Let's do the same with driving your car! Let's make driving alone in your car to work like sleeping with your sister! It's morally repugnant. It disgusting. Only a backwoods yokel would do it (well probably because they don't have any public transit, but still).
Don't just give up and strikethrough "people who come in via mass transit". You're killing the idea before it's even born.
The thing about public transit is that it gets better the more people who ride it. Right now I get 20-40 minutes between busses. But if I can get all of my neighbors to ride we might get 10-30 minutes between busses. And eventually we could get to busses every five minutes, which would completely negate most convenience issues (since it's not really the speed of the bus but making the connections that takes the time).
I can't believe an Austinist editor would sleep with their sister.
it'll be radical when every tall building in austin looks the same. even better, it will be occupied by the finest houston, dallas, and california has to offer.
is there any way they could just shield our view of the sky in addition to these buildings, i'm totally sick of the sky anyways.
luxury condo jihad! yeah, i said it...
Yeah! What daniel said! Those people from Houston or Dallas don't have any constitutional right to be here in Austin. Austin is just for people from Austin!