Austin's Emerging Skyline
Austin isn't just growing tech companies and suburbs... we're growing a skyline
After a couple of years, seemingly, of not getting out as much, a return to downtown Austin includes quite a few surprises. The skyline has, quite simply, gotten bigger and taller.
A year ago, the ABJ published a report on 43+ towers going up in Austin.
Of the 37 projects reported last year, one was scrapped that had been proposed next to Austin’s downtown homeless shelter. That means that during the recession, seven new towering proposals have hit our radar.
And that was a year ago… since then new projects have been announced. As of January last year, 3.5 million square feet of office space were under construction downtown. For those tracking at home, Indeed tower, 405 Colorado, the Quincy, the Thompson, Native, Alexan Waterloo, Hyatt Centric, and the Austin Marriott have all been delivered. Google Tower (a sail-like structure) looks ready and is scheduled for opening Real Soon Now. The 6 X Guadalupe project is already so tall it is visibly clear it will be the tallest tower in Austin.
And while downtown gets all the attention for real estate investment in the news, and often for tech - a little known fact is that most of the tech employment is actually north of downtown. Supporting that employment, the Domain area is going vertical as well - remarkably so. Brandywine is redeveloping the old IBM campus near the Domain, investing $3B into the development (think 3 Tesla Gigafactories). They’ve nicknamed their development “Uptown” and it isn’t a bad name considering it feels like a northern balance point to Downtown’s density.
Q2 Stadium is in the vicinity, and a lot of both residential, office, and retail development is going in around it. It doesn’t hurt that Austin’s only metro rail line also travels from downtown north through the Domain/Uptown area. If you’re wondering whether developers support transit - they do. Brandywine is co-investing to create a new train station for the Red Line for their development. They know how important it will be to make their development a jumping off point for the immediate area *as well as* a jumping off point for going downtown.
“We are delighted to begin realizing the ultimate vision for Uptown ATX – which will accelerate establishing this area as Austin’s second downtown. This community brings unmatched lifestyle and work experiences and is intentionally designed to prioritize bold architecture, community connections, greenspace, walkability, and mass transit access,” Brandywine President and CEO Jerry Sweeney said in a statement.
Brandywine and the developers behind the Domain know what they’re doing. And they’re not wrong - the whole area is walkable, the parking is free, you can live/work/play in the same dense space - at a (somewhat) discount to downtown. Let’s not kid ourselves though - the folks who live in and around downtown view this area as “south Dallas” rather than part of Austin. But it really does have a lot of the same appeal as downtown. It isn’t as organic and layered- it’s all been built in the last 20 years after all - but it does have the headline features you’re looking for.
More on the buildings going vertical in this area in another article.
There are a lot of people who find the vertical development in Austin to be turning us from “weird” into “corporate”. And that may be true. But the vertical developments are a sign of how much the Austin economy is growing, how much companies are still betting on offices, and how much developers are betting on new residents calling Austin home. I can’t help but see it as progress - admittedly progress that comes with some costs and trade-offs - but progress nonetheless.
One more thing… There’s a crop of great “new” public companies in Austin these days. One of the home-grown success stories is Vital Farms. Vital Farms recently released their latest quarterly results. I have found reading their quarterly reports and earnings call transcripts to be an education on how the business of providing fresh eggs to groceries works. Vital Farms started in Austin with a very small capacity and is now (I believe) the leading brand in the USA for pasture-raised eggs and the #2 brand for eggs overall. They are posting growth rates ~30%+ and over $77M in revenue per quarter. It’s a scale business, and Q&A reveals it is also a resilient one.
Vital Farms believes that their process for raising hens and producing eggs is a better process: producing better eggs, more sustainably, while producing more profit for their partners and stakeholders in the whole supply chain (including their retail partners). The examples of their approach show up in long-term thinking and in their quarterly reports.
Avian flu has made another appearance this year and is driving egg prices up. But Vital Farms’ free range chicken producers are less affected by Avian flu. But you’d also learn how higher prices for eggs result in higher revenues for eggs that don’t meet retail standards and get turned into ingredients for foods that require liquid egg as an ingredient.
Egg Central Station is one of their differentiators in terms of how to scale their operation - and there was a good discussion about how they have met capacity and likely will look for a different location for the next Egg Central in order to diversify weather and geography risks.
Vital Farms’ mission is summarized by their CEO, Russell Diez-Canseco, at the beginning of the call:
Vital Farms has always been a brand challenging the norms of how most of the food in our country is produced. We have a stakeholder-driven approach to capitalism that has propelled our growth to be the leading pasture-raised egg brand and second leading egg brand in the United States by retail dollar sales and has enabled us to improve the lives of millions of people, millions of animals and the planet. We believe the historic performance of our business is proof that food can be produced through sustainable human capital, animal welfare and agricultural practices while scaling profitably.
Back in 2020, as a newly minted public company, and one of the few publicly B-corporations, the Austin Business Journal ran a nice story about the company and its approach to sustainable farming.
Austin Business Journal has another article on Vital Farms just released : "With new packing hub, Vital Farms aims for $650M in annual revenue" -
https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2022/05/12/more-than-eggs-are-on-the-horizon-for-vital-farms.html?utm_source=st&utm_medium=en&utm_campaign=me&utm_content=AU&ana=e_AU_me&j=27688229&senddate=2022-05-12
"We don't see a natural limit to how big the egg business can go,” Diez-Canseco said. "We're also starting to think about what might be next. We're starting to look at where else we can help improve the way food is produced and brought to market in this country beyond eggs and butter.”