Turning ATX into an ATM
Five years later…
Austin’s skyline has changed markedly in the last 5 years. I took this photo from the deck of the Zilker Clubhouse yesterday (June 9 2024):
It was created in a different Austin and has withstood all that has come after because it is a part of Austin’s cultural story that many people find important and worth saving. It has been the site of weddings, memorial services, graduations and other celebrations marking important points in the human experience of generations of Austinites.
Rising High…further from our roots.
It takes 2–10 years to build a high rise office building, which means that the buildings we see today are often build for a world that the developers are betting will exist by the time it’s ready for occupancy.
The developers are losing that bet for the first in in a long time:
Here, about 6 million square feet of new office space will hit the market in the next few years — equivalent to 105 football fields. Between spaces completed since 2020 and what’s still in the pipeline, the office market will grow nearly 25 percent — the fastest rate on the continent. That includes projects such as the Waterline, which will become the tallest building in all of Texas, at 74 stories, when it opens in 2026, and a mammoth 1.1 million-square-foot complex on the city’s outskirts where a former 3M campus is being redeveloped (into what, exactly, is still unclear).
And the vast majority of projects are blazing ahead without companies lined up to move in. Roughly 87 percent of new office space is expected to open vacant, according to data from the commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. ~ Here, about 6 million square feet of new office space will hit the market in the next few years — equivalent to 105 football fields. Between spaces completed since 2020 and what’s still in the pipeline, the office market will grow nearly 25 percent — the fastest rate on the continent. That includes projects such as the Waterline, which will become the tallest building in all of Texas, at 74 stories, when it opens in 2026, and a mammoth 1.1 million-square-foot complex on the city’s outskirts where a former 3M campus is being redeveloped (into what, exactly, is still unclear).
And the vast majority of projects are blazing ahead without companies lined up to move in. Roughly 87 percent of new office space is expected to open vacant, according to data from the commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. ~ Austin’s office market is exploding. But no one is moving in, Washington Post, December 15 2023
The world is changing and the economy is changing along with it. We’ll have to see if we can flip the script back to the story of Austin being awesome… for everyone.
Austinites are notorious for their obsession with the awesomeness of Austin, as noted in this Buzzfeed post 34 Things Austinites Love
So, it’s no wonder that this photo comparing the Austin skyline from 2010 to the one in 2017 is making the rounds on facebook, with the expected laments about how things have changed from the one where we knew all the names of the buildings to a skyline dominated by bright shiny objects.
Each of those buildings represent external interests investing in Austin, not as a community, but as a transaction space in which they generate money that’s then extracted back out to their locations far from Austin. Thus, our beloved ATX has become the world’s ATM.
The most recent example of this is the reintroduction of Uber & Lyft into the Austin transportation ecosystem. In May 2016, the citizens of Austin voted to remove these companies ability to conduct business here unless they fulfilled local requirements for fingerprinting. No doubt there were other powers at work, but the end result is that these companies left. And then grabbed bagfuls of money, went to the Texas Legislature and Governor Abbott signed the bill that allowed them to return to Austin, without regard for local wishes, with the added bonus of relieving them of the $900,000 they would have to pay to Austin for operations.
After Uber & Lyft left, a number of transportation contenders came forward to fill the market need, not too surprising in a city of entrepreneurs. One, Ride Austin was completely homegrown, created by locals with the core values that Austinites claim to support. From their FAQs: RideAustin believes that ridesharing should be for everyone. To drive costs down and to make this accessible to all Austinites — we are not generating profits. This will enable drivers to earn more and riders to pay less while helping support local charities.
They had a strong year and then Uber & Lyft returned, resulting in this lessons learned article by Andy Tryba, CEO and Co-founder of Ride Austin:
Overall — we have to give credit to where credit is due. The Silicon Valley giants have been able to come back into a market they abandoned with very little effort. This goes to their strengths and the Austin community’s willingness to overlook their corporate flaws and past history. RideAustin will continue to stand-up for what we believe and continue to attempt to change the industry (something we believe we’ve done in our small way through things like Uber/Lyft now doing more charity donations) — but we’re going to have to be good enough to compete and we’re going to continue to need the Austin community’s #ridelocal support. We’ve been open and transparent since the beginning — so we’ll also ensure we continue to blog about what we’re seeing and our actions.
The bottom line of this post is not that progress is bad, it’s that rewriting the story of Austin without actual Austinites at the table brings forward a story of distorted values. We end up with a town that is Austin in name only, no longer rooted in the idea of community that brought us here and still has the power to keep us engaged.
However, it can be different. We can support those who keep wealth local, like calling Ride Austin to take us to Deep Eddy Pool where Austinites have cooled off from the Texas heat since 1936 and admire the mosaic mural created by local mosaic artisans like Craig Lopez:
The story of a city is told in many ways, and its values are expressed in actions large & small. Sometimes it’s just the tiniest click on a phone that tells the biggest story. #ridelocal
